


20,160 minutes

by blank_ghost



Series: unfortunate event in time [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Jötunn Loki, M/M, Magic, Sequel to unfortunate event in time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 15:32:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blank_ghost/pseuds/blank_ghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Live becomes an odd game for Tony. Dodging calls from just about everyone. Ignoring paperwork that Pepper has faxed over. Watching Loki. Coffee and more Loki. Workshop. </p><p>Loki. The god isn't just a breath of fresh life to Tony, he is life itself. </p><p>It's like learning a new science field. The botany of Norse gods. </p><p>Lokiology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Nearly one year ago, this fic and it’s prequel; unfortunate event in time was removed from the internet because- well to be honest, because I felt it was crap. The outcry to have this fic back has been overwhelming. I had never thought people cared that much.  
> There has literally been too many people requesting to have this fic back to list them all here, but you know who you are and this is your baby now. 
> 
> Big Thank you to Becky for coming back and going over this all once more for old time’s sake. <3 
> 
> Enjoy.

  
    It will later be recorded that on that mid June day - when the heat was already record breaking - that the San Andreas fault at approximately eleven fifteen AM would shift. The resulting earthquake was a 7.8 on the Richter Scale.   
  
    LA and surrounding cities would accumulate millions of dollars of damage. Equally millions of lives will change, set upon a new path destiny shifted as easily as the earth.   
      
    Of all those millions of lives changed, surely none could be more important than the reset of a genius and a god.   
  
O0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    Loki is not completely unfamiliar with pain; he had spent the greater part of his life as brother to Thor. The radiating ache blooming down the left side of his abdomen was far beyond any territory he was used to, having crossed the hazy line from pain into agony.  
  
    In reality, his first clear thoughts are that he's in the healing room. It's a comforting moment before enough of his brain wakes up to realize that would mean he's back on Asgard and his father is sick enough to heal him before beheading him.   
  
    Cracking his eyes open as a low moan escapes his throat he blinks back the blurriness of double vision.   
  
    He is most definitely not on Asgard.   
  
    The room is a cool gray, a comforting change to Asgard’s golden yellow, the window to the one side blocking out the overly bright glare from the sun. Midgard then. The world is still moving on without him, nine realms still turning on aces much like he’s never existed. Nothing has changed, yet everything feels different now.  
  
    Sitting up is out of the question and for once in his life he doesn’t feel the urge to defy authority just for spite. Staying down is nice, staying down is good. The pallet he's laid out on is soft and clean feeling and for a moment that's the only thing that matters.   
  
    Reaching up to rub the sleep from his eyes, he stops at a pinch of pain in his arm, eyes flickering down to the complaining appendage to find a thin tube stretching from him up into a bag dangling from a pole.  
  
    Breathing as deep a breath as he dares with his beyond pain, into agony, body. Loki slowly uses his unburdened hand to lift the edge of the fine spun sheets covering him. Nearly naked.   
  
    Pushing the covers down slowly he brings into view the crisp white bandages wrapped up and down his belly. Gently brushing his fingers over the wrappings he can feel the heat rising from the wound they cover.   
  
    The hole in his side from the metal bar.   
  
    His whole body shudders as he groans again. Lying his head back down against the soft pillow and closes his eyes tight he has to bite down on his lower lip to remove the urge cry at his failures.  
  
    The spell he failed at.   
  
    The Earthquake.   
  
    His death.   
  
    It all comes back to him with surprising clarity, like he's watching a moving picture more than recalling a memory.   
  
    The avenging IronMan, Tony.   
  
    Vowing to return to him.  
  
    He did apparently, and judging by the lack of an armed guard the mortal also upheld his vow not to go to his superior officers. The only thing Loki can’t seem to understand at the moment is the why. Why risk his own safety, surely his commanding officers would seek punishment for aiding Loki.   
  
    "Hey, you’re looking... alive." The voice brings his eyes open and to the door. He knows it well enough now that it doesn’t surprise him at all to see the human genius standing in the doorway.   
  
    Tony's brown hair is rumpled and damp looking under a clean white bandage. His stance is tired though, behind the bright clear eyes the man is weary, shoulders slumped, feet wide to support himself. If Loki was looking for a moment to attack, now would be it. He doesn’t even question the bitter taste in the back of his throat at the idea of hurting the mortal. It’s simply not an option.  
  
    Swallowing several times before his voice is anything but a scratchy groan he offers his best smile. "You too."  
  
    "Yeah. Well, the shower did most of the work and Metallica can make anyone look like a rock star." Tony offers, leaving the doorway and coming into the spare room. "You’ve been out for a few hours now, just incase you wanted to know. I hope you didn’t have any other evil business planned because your lack of cell phone made it hard for me to call and reschedule your calendar." The bed dips as he sits on the side of it, folding his hands in his lap and looking much like a lost child. "I brought your glow stick back too."  
  
    Tony's eyes are down on his hands and Loki takes the moment to study the body sitting on the side of the lush bed the way his mahogany eyes seem to take in everything. This is the man that saved his life.   
  
    "You-" He has to stop and swallow a few more times, his head spinning from the concept that the mortal, someone who is supposed to be an enemy, out for Loki's blood like the rest of the world, came back for him. Has done more for him than any supposed blood kin ever has.  
  
    "Yeah. I know." Tony grunts, "I came back for you, right? Yeah. I did."  
  
    "Do you regret it?" He finds himself asking, his eyes falling closed without his approval as the bedside shifts again in what can only be a shrug from the mortal.  
  
    "Not yet."  
  
    "You will." He says on a sigh, not finding the strength to look back to Tony. The fire burning in his side feels like it's draining the life from him. Maybe it is still. Maybe he's been saved from a death in such a terrifying place, to die peacefully.   
  
    Somehow that seems like something far too nice, he'd never deserve that.   
  
    The mortal at his side says something else. His voice low and gruff. Loki's too far fallen into the blanket of sleep to understand the words the man is saying. He just hopes he keeps talking. The soothing sound is a comfort he craves amongst the pain.   
  
  
O0o0o0o0o0o0  
  
  
  
  
  
    Tony reaches up to comb his fingers through his hair only to stop himself. The neat little row of stitches along the back of his head came with a no touch rule. He can’t even comb his hair. He really shouldn’t drink for at least the next two days too. Damn. He can use a drink.   
  
    Pulling the blankets back up over Loki's shoulders he looks to the unmoving god for a moment before covering his face with his hands. Scrubbing hard, maybe if he rubs hard enough he can erase all of his problems. Not Loki though. He’s not giving up on that man.   
  
    He’s been through death and back with the god and he’s not even going to think about the sponge bath and how often he puked trying to clean the wound up again.  
  
    "You’re a really big pain in the ass, you know that?" He asks, glancing up to the lax face. The god looks young sleeping like that, too young.   
  
    If the cards of life had been dealt differently and Loki was human the man would be in the full swing of life. He could have been someone Tony shared beer with at the bar, or passed on a sidewalk.  
  
    Scooping up a limp hand, he checks the IV feeding pain meds and fluids into the god and gets distracted looking at all the small little cuts and scraps lining the long elegant fingers.   
  
    "You’d be... A scientist I bet. Maybe some chem. lab rat like Bruce." He nods, agreeing with himself there. Loki studies magic according to Thor; has his whole life. He could see a human Loki putting that much dedication into science too.   
  
    "You’ll pull out of this." He says with a sigh, standing back up and laying the hand back flat on the bed. "I don’t make a habit of cheering for the bad guy, but... I've been called a bad guy too."   
  
    Brushing his fingers over Loki's warm brow, he swears under his breath. Pulling his fingers back and fisting them so tight that his knuckles pop before turning away, striding out of the room.   
  
    "He wakes up again, you tell me Jarvis."  
  
    "My pleasure, sir."   
  
  
O0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    "Pepper, I'm really touched that you’re concerned but I still plan on staying out here for a while. I‘ve missed Malibu and this house." Tony does his best to keep just the right amount of whine in his voice that make him sound like he's still got a head ache.   
  
    "I can come out then, Tony. You sound like you need someone."  
  
    "I have someone." He says, realizing only a moment too late that he really should think about words that come out of his mouth instead of just speaking on the fly. "I'm saying I've got Jarvis here and he-"  
  
    "It’s okay Tony; we've been apart for a while now."   
  
    Yeah. Almost a month. Apparently she didn’t look at piggybacking a nuclear warhead into outer darkness as really stable relationship material.   
  
    "I know Pepp." He sighs reaching up to rub a hand through his hair and stopping himself so in his anger he glares daggers at the coffee pot that's working so slowly in front of him. "I'm fine though. You can stop worrying."  
  
    "I'm not the only one worrying. Rogers said that you left just after the EMT's looked at you."  
  
    "There wasn't much to look at. I'd been cracked on the head; we both know that I'm hard headed."  
  
    Pepper sighs over the line as the little green light on the coffee pot signifies that liquid life has arrived. He really needs to find a faster way of making coffee.  
  
    "I'd still feel better if you let someone stay with you. Bruce-"  
  
    "Sir." Jarvis cuts her off and he snaps his fingers in the air with a frown.  
  
    "Not now Jarv."   
  
    "Bruce said he offered to come over and you turned him down."  
  
    Yeah, it had been like kicking a puppy but Tony didn’t need or want an audience for his dying god.   
  
    His. Huh.   
  
    "I'm fine, Pepper. Look at it this way, send over some boring stuff for me to sign and I'll do it for you."   
  
    "Sir, your vis-"  
  
    "Quiet, Jarvis. That sound good to you, Pepper?" He asks, hooking his cell between his shoulder and ear, pouring his coffee before turning to lean his hip against the counter. The mug nearly falling from his hand.   
  
    Loki is standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Loose fitting cotton pants hanging so low on his narrow hips it's almost obscene. The blanket clutched around his shoulders looks like a gray cape, it’s all very surreal. There’s no air of malevolence, in fact if he hadn’t know it was the same man, he’d say he wasn’t capable of the damage he’d once wreaked upon the city.  
  
    Behind the curtain of black hair dull green eyes that seem both empty and confused search out Tony.   
  
    "Send the paperwork over, Pepper, I'll call you back later. Lots of love. Buh-bye." He ends the call, dropping his new cell onto the counter and shoving his mug up next to it. Holding his hands up and out slowly like he's approaching a wild animal. A very rabid wild animal.  
  
    "Are you okay? You’re clearly not okay." Tony says in the softest tone he can muster with his heart playing giddy-up behind his ribs. Loki sways as his eyes focus on him.  
  
    "Where did your IV go, man? That should stay in." He says, reaching out slowly to grab the wrist in question. Blood making a slow thick travel down the pale skin. His fingertips only brush feather soft on hot skin before Loki stumbles back, eyes going wide.  
  
    "It is unsafe here."  
  
    "No. It's safe here. No safer place in the world for your right now but you've got to lie back down before you fall down. I don’t think you’re here with me."  
  
    Green eyes close slowly before blinking back open again. "No. it's... unsafe... alone. Cold. They‘ll all come for me." Loki breaths out. His voice whisper thin.   
  
    Tony tries again to grab for the gods free hand, catching and holding the trembling fingers.   
  
    "Dark. Can’t breathe in the dark."   
  
    He's delirious, he's got to be. Tony reaches out with both hands now as Loki starts to sink down to the tile floor, gripping tight to his shoulders to keep him up.  
  
    Loki's still whispering but it's not in a language Tony understands, something rough and almost germen, probably something that hasn't been spoken on earth in the last four hundred years.  Catching Loki's jaw in his hands he forces the shaking god to look at him, the eyes are fever hazed and scared.   
  
    "Come on, back to bed with you."   
  
    "NO!" Loki shouts suddenly. Pushing his hands against Tony's chest.  
  
    "Fine. Okay. Go to the couch then." He snaps back. Waving his hand down the hall, Loki looks in that direction before shaking his head.   
  
    "Then where do you want?" Tony asks, softer now, frustration bleeding through his voice. Taking Loki's elbow into his hand so he can gently lead him away back to the spare room. “You don’t even know what you want.”  
  
    Loki's green eyes move over to him for a moment, impossibly liquid with unshed tears, "Home."    The single word is like twisting a dagger up into Tony's chest. Last he heard this guy had no home. None that he really wanted to belong to. He doesn’t know what to say to comfort the ill god; swallowing thickly he wishes he was drunk right now. He’s always better at handling bad situations drunk.   
  
    He leads Loki only a few shuffling feet before the gods knees give out, he's too dazed to even stop his own fall as his knees land on the marble tile with a crack.   
  
    Tony swears hard as he sinks to his knees next to the shaking man and tries to pick him back up. Spine going straight and eyes comically wide as thin arms wrap around his chest. "Cold... alone..." Loki breathes. His body hot against where he's pushing himself against Tony's chest. Uncontrollable shakes chasing up the god’s spine.   
  
    Sinking down onto his ass Tony grabs the blanket that had been dropped in the hall. Pulling it up and around Loki's lean shoulders. "I haven't had to sleep in this hall since my thirty first birthday." He grumbles, making himself comfortable under the burning weight of Loki. "I was much more drunk than and it was with a woman."   
  
    Sighing heavily, he leans his chin on top of Loki's head.  
  
    "Why didn’t you tell me, Jarvis?" He asks, eyes lifting to the ceiling above them.  
  
    "I tried sir, two times. Both when he awoke and when he left the room, you dismissed me both times sir." The AI reminds him.   
  
    "If he wakes up and stabs me, it's your fault." Tony threatens as Loki impossibly burrows into Tony's arms considering the man is nearly a foot taller.   
  
    "Of course, sir. Should I dim the lights?"  
  
    "Yeah." He breathes out.  
  
    He has the feeling that Loki's done this before, a million years ago maybe. He wonders if it was Thor's arms or Odin's. The god of thunder left out the fact that he may or may not have held his little brother when he was unwell.   
  
    Stroking his hand up and down the god’s back as he moans lowly, haunted by fevered dreams or memories.  
  
    Tony had never seen himself as a humanitarian. He’d built weapons of mass destruction for a living, and even reformed from that, he still sought out war. Comforting things wasn't on Tony's vast list of tricks. Holding and caring and loving weren’t part of his makeup. His own father might be to blame for that. Never once did Howard offer Tony affection, it's hard to mimic something he's never seen.   
  
    He’s learning here and now; Loki a big 3D paint by numbers of emotions that Tony's never encountered and probably avoided.   
  
    He doesn’t know why he's forcing himself to take the crash course with Loki, of all people, but he doesn’t want to give up. Maybe because he needs this just as much.   
  
    Squeezing the god tighter to his chest Tony burrows his nose in silky black hair and closes his eyes.


	2. 2

  
  
    Loki falls. Outer darkness ripping at his skin and soul alike with obsidian claws.   
  
    A thousand invisible hands pulling him in a thousand different directions. The bitter emptiness filling up. Pressing against him till he's in a void and a small box at the same time. Both weightless and as heavy as Mjolnir.   
  
    Spinning   
  
            And spinning  
  
         And spinning   
  
            And spinning through space.   
  
    Alone and surrounded.   
  
    Such a terrible person viewing into his heart of hearts. Mocking and laughing and plucking at strung emotions as easily as it plucks at exposed nerves.   
  
    He’s screaming and crying and dying till it's no longer him in the darkness alone.   
  
    The utmost black penetrated by a ghost of light, shimmering and liquid.  
  
     As white as it is blue. It shines like the sun in the darkness, chasing shadows like a hungry cat would a mouse. Grounding him like nothing else. Soothing and holding and loving as it gives him everything he craves and misses.   
  
    As long as the light is there the shadows are gone. Kept at bay by his guiding light, guarding light. Forever shining. Shining bright.   
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    Waking is like fog slowly burning off in the midday sun. At first only a little is clear till slowly the mist creeps back to the darkness in which it lives leaving the world crisp and clear in its wake. Opening his eyes slowly, he watches the sun play a path across the wall and floor. Creeping along as slow as the fog receding from his mind.   
  
    He has the distinct impression of a memory, waking up somewhere different. A smaller room. This one is much more sprawling and obviously lived in. The glowing electronics sit on a desk with papers, a war warn leather jacket sits on the desk chair.   
  
    Shifting his body a little to test it for aches, he stills as the room swims a moment before righting itself. His side is a mess of pain and his head aches oddly like he's been drugged. It would explain the god forsaken fog.   
  
    Closing his eyes he breaths deep, taking the scent of another person into his body. It’s a comforting scent although for the life of him he knows not why.   
  
    The soft background static stops, leaving the room in true silence for some time, some of it spent watching the sun move and some of it spent not quite asleep but not what he would consider awake.   
  
    Higher cognitive thought seems to be out of his grasp but for now he's okay with that. The odd silence in his head is soothing.  
  
    A door cracks open and bare feet slap across the tile floor, drawing his head back up.  
  
    The mortal.   
  
    Many of his hazed memories involve him, none in the familiar ways that induce panic and pain. The bare chest, odd glowing sphere embedded there with a ring of metal, catch his eyes first.  
  
    "I had wondered, is it not removable?"   
  
    "It can come out, but then I'd be dead."   
  
    Is it cold or warm? The memories of its feel are numb. Everything seems a little numb.  
  
    Eyes moving further down, he follows the lines that taper down into black slacks before traveling back up to his face. Brown hair that's rumpled enough to be considered stylish. Impressive mahogany eyes that meet his.  
  
    "You’re awake?" Surprise colors the mortal’s voice.  
  
    "Hey, here is a novel idea. While I'm gone, try to practice saying Tony, okay?"   
  
    Tony.  
  
    "Hey. You’re really awake this time. Welcome to the world of the living." Tony smiles, striding across the room and pushing a cool hand against his brow before Loki can pull away what little room he has. "Still a little warm, but you’re really here this time."  
  
    That smile is genuine, sincere enough that Loki has to look away for a moment across the ocean of rumpled sheets and blankets.   
  
    "What happened?" His voice is rough from lack of use, or screaming. He dreads the thought it could be that.   
  
    Tony is silent for a moment, bringing his eyes back up to the other man’s. There’s so much emotion in the brown depths that Loki doesn’t understand.   
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0  
  
  
  
    "You’ve been out of it for almost two days now; I thought I'd lost you a few times. Your fever was through the roof." Tony says having the decency to look away down to his bare feet.   
  
    He’d refused to give up hope. Even when Jarvis had told him that with a fever that high infection was running a party through Loki's body. The ice bath to help bring it down and the heart attack on Tony's behalf when the god had stopped breathing for a moment.   
  
    Groaning and rubbing his palms to his hands he sinks onto the edge of the bed. Loki's silence is enough to say everything.  
  
    "You... don’t remember much, do you?"  
  
    "Only faded visions." Loki says softly and when Tony looks back to him, his dark head is down against the pillow once more.   
  
    "You were sick, man. You... who's Heimdall?"   
  
    Loki sucks in a breath and struggles to sit up, his arms shaking with the force he's putting behind it. Shit. Tony shouldn’t have asked.   
  
    "No. It's okay. Stay down. You in pain? You look like you’re in pain, let me get you something for that." He says, laying a hand on Loki's bare shoulder and helping to ease him back down, although if the slightly panicked breaths are any sign of the internal turmoil the god is clearly still shaken.   
  
    He stands to his feet, digging through the piles of old pain meds for something to give to Loki. Busying himself like he has been; making himself useful.   
  
    "Heimdall is no one. It is just... a shock to hear that name is all."   
  
    "You’re really shitty at lying,” Tony says with a sigh. Sitting back on the side of the bed with a glass of water, tilting his head down to indicate the god’s shaking hands. He can compose that dead smile into place but he's obviously not strong enough to keep up a full façade.   
  
    Tony waits for Loki to ease himself up against the headboard before handing over the water. Now that the god’s mind is clearer, he's sure he'd much prefer the small dignified acts. He knows what it feels like to nurse a shattered ego and he's very familiar with the need to do things for one's self.  
  
    Taking the glass into his hands Loki stares down at the clear water for an eternity. Tony's okay waiting, he’s learned that over the last few days, waiting he can do for Loki.  
  
    "Heimdall is the gate keeper to Asgard. To call out for him is like... ringing a bell to be heard. In days of old, all one had to do to return to Asgard was call out Heimdall’s name. The Bifrost was short to follow."  
  
    Tony flinches and looks away. Loki had been calling for home in more than one way, even if the man doesn’t admit it.  
  
    "I am lucky, Heimdall serves Odin well, he would have been able to see me and informed him at once."  
  
    "Maybe he pretended not to hear?"   
  
    "Heimdall hates me, "Loki says around a drink of water, clearing his throat.   
  
    "Hate’s a strong word."  
  
    "I caused the destruction of the Bifrost. I might have had a small amount of fun in destroying Heimdall himself for a moment as well."       
  
    The cocky grin only lasts a moment but it's the clearest sign of life that Tony's seen from Loki all day. Vivid green eyes looking back down to the water in his hands as the two of them fall into a familiar silence.  
  
    "You know, as far as I care, you can stand on the roof and call out his name. I won’t let them get to you." Tony says maybe expecting something more than the razor sharp frown he receives from Loki.   
  
    "It would very unwise, Mortal. You can do little to protect me, a god, from other gods."  
  
    Ouch, right then. Loki is feeling better.   
  
    Standing back to his feet Tony arches his back to crack it before crossing the room. Fishing a somewhat clean shirt from the floor he glances back to the god.   
  
    "I've got some calls to make and I might be down in my workshop for a while, do yourself a favor and take a hot shower. Tell Jarvis when you’re done and I'll order food. It’s been a while since you ate. Pizza okay for you? Of course Pizza is okay."  
  
    "Jarvis?" Loki blinks before straightening his spine and looking to the closed hall door like a handmaid is supposed to come to his beck and call. Such a princess.  
  
    "Jarv." Tony smiles, rocking back on his heels. "You play nice with Loki. He’s our guest."  
  
    "Yes sir. Always sir." Jarvis almost sounds mocking, like Tony is the one with playing problems. The nerve. Tony would be more insulted if not for the wide eyed startled look on the god’s face as he strides out of the room. All self satisfied male.   
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    Getting up from the bed had been a challenge that in hindsight Loki should have foreseen. His legs shake from lack of use or simply because he still feels like he can sleep for many more days on end. Hand planted firmly against one wall for support he scans the room.  
  
    "Show yourself, helper." He demands but receives no voice from the thin air like before, fingers curling against the wall as he uses his other hand to hold against his aching side. He remembers the pain being greater, and he's not sorry to see that having past.   
  
    Stumbling into the side chamber, bathroom as they say in Midgard, he's unfazed by the situation. He’d bathed before on Midgard. The knobs are easily handled. The water coming down is steaming hot against his hand, fog creeping over the mirrors as Loki looks to them. To himself.  
  
    He looks like death. Green eyes a little wild and more than a little hollow. He’d always been pale by Asgardian terms but he's now the color of milk, made all the worse by his dark hair that’s down to his shoulders.   
  
    "Do yourself a favor, next time: die." The reflection echoes his own words back to him. Lifting a stiff upper lip at himself in a sneer.   
  
    His eyes lower down to the bandage about his belly. Daft fingers working the binding away and slowly unraveling the dressings like removing the wrapping form a terrible package.   
  
    Loki hisses in a breath as the warm misty air touches his wound, red and angry looking but scabbed enough to be considered on the mend.   
  
    The neat little row of black stitches holding it together makes him raise an eyebrow. Did Tony bring someone in, or work this craft himself? He chuckles mirthlessly at the idea of the man bent over him with needle and thread in hand. Crafty human.   
  
    Turning about and looking over his shoulder he looks at the matching set of stitches on his back. With his magic gone from him and his ability to heal fast with it he's sure he'll have a scar to forever remember this time by.   
  
    It will be nothing compared to the deep wounds to his soul.   
  
    The soft pants are easy enough to remove with a draw string and soon enough he's under the hot spray. The needles of water prickling into his sore muscles in a pleasing way as he brings his head down against the still cool tile wall.   
  
    Eyes fixed down on his bare feet and the water rushing to the drain he can’t help but let his mind wander to how far he's fallen.  
  
    Fallen from Asgard, from all homes he's ever known and cast out into the world like the monster he is now... always has been. What was laying unknown to him beneath his skin was always there. Seeping into Odin's subconscious, tainting his view of Loki through out his whole life.   
  
    He was never enough, never like Thor, golden and radiant.   
  
    Never an Odinson.   
  
    He'd killed his own father but now he questions what the man was at heart.   
  
    Closing his eyes tight, he chokes down a near sob of a breath.   
  
    Through everything he's ever done, he knows in his heart he is the same man, NO, monster.   
  
    Midgardians say it best. One can not beat out what is born in the bones. And in his bones, Loki is Laufey's son.   
      
    He doesn’t stop his slow sink to his knees under the spray of water as tears burn in his eyes.  
      
  
    Loki doesn’t know how long he's there, nose against the damn tile, blessedly warm water running down his back and face, washing away his damning tears. He’s never been one to wallow in self shame but he's never had much of a chance to do it.   
  
    Now that he's trapped in stagnant time it seems it's all he's capable of doing.   
  
    Arching his spine and curling himself further into a ball he digs his own fingers into his hair.  
  
    "Loki?"   
  
    That voice cuts through the static of the falling water, bringing his head to the side and looking with tired eyes at Tony. He has to blink back the water and tears for a moment before he's truly sure the mortal is kneeling there, just outside the tile lip.  
  
    The man has concern written all over his face as he works the handles of the shower. The flow of water tinkling down to nothing before a gentle broad hand sets onto his back.  
  
    "I'm not going to force you; will you let me help you?"  
  
    "Help?" Loki asks in question, licking his damp lips and slowly pushing himself up from the slick floor. "I don't need help."  
  
    Tony sighs and shakes his head, offering a weak smile. "Yeah, because showers are fun when in a little ball like that. For such a tall S.O.B. you sure know how to make yourself into a little package."  
  
    Loki lacks the energy or mirth to narrow his eyes at the blatant jab; instead he rests his cheek back down against the wet tile and sighs out a soft breath.  
  
    “I will accept your aid,” He says at last.  
  
    "Come on, buddy." Tony's strong arms wrap around his shoulders and ease him up.   
  
    Leaning his damp head against Tony’s chest, so close to that little glowing contraption he can actually hear its hum. Locking into that sound and using it to block out the thoughts filtering through his mind. In some far away place in his psyche he knows that sound well, the combined electrical hum and a steady heart beat. It’d kept him alive when he was so close to death.   
  
    Tony eases a finger under his chin, tilting his head up slowly till deep brown eyes meet green.  
  
    "Are you sure you don’t want to just lie back down?"  
  
    "If I lay any longer I will become one with that bed."  
  
    The mortal chuckles at that and offers a few thick towels before rising to his feet, bringing Loki up to his with him.   
  
    Wrapping one towel around his waist he does his best not to look at himself in the mirror, instead his eyes find their way back to Tony.   
  
    "Why did you return?"  
  
    "Jarvis told me you looked like you needed help." Tony offers with a shrug of his shoulders, backing away slowly as Loki tests his weight on his own two legs.  
  
    Once he's sure of his own ability to stay upright he nods to Tony who walks back into the large bedroom, pulling clothes from a pile and tossing it onto the bed.  
  
    "I'm not dressing you. I do have lines I refuse to cross. They're thin, but there… Sometimes." Tony offers, looking to Loki in the doorway. Loki's not sure if the mortal is assessing him for bodily damage, mental stability, or simply appreciating the view. Clearing his throat to break the odd moment.  
  
    "I'm going to call in for food. Get dressed and come down the hall." Tony says quickly, rubbing his temple with his hands before striding out of the room.   
  
    What an odd mortal man.  
  
      
O0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    "You’ve got to be kidding me, what do they eat out there?" He says around a mouth full of pizza, eyeing the god as he pokes his own slice with a fork. A fucking fork?!  
  
    "Not this." The god scuffs, holding his nose high and looking down upon the insulting pizza.  
  
    "Try it."   
  
    "I doubt it will be good." Loki scuffs, leaning back against the counter and eyeing the piece from a different angle.   
  
    The god looks better now then he did in the bedroom, dark hair clean and damp as it curls around the long tips. The Black Sabbath shirt fits all wrong on him. Oh well, it’s better than armor and a fuckload better than blood.  
  
    "You’re not human if it doesn’t taste good." Tony says with a roll of his eyes before catching himself. Blushing a little. "Most humans like pizza is all I'm trying to say. It’s a food shared by all the species."  
  
    Loki sighs and shakes his head. "I understand you can stop trying to correct yourself." Scooping his slice up with long fingers Loki takes a teasing nibble of the tip, chewing thoughtfully before frowning.   
  
    "Oh come on now! You’re just being a pain!" Tony laughs as Loki tears the crust from the pizza and eats it like a bread stick.   
  
    "The sauce is most..."  
  
    "Good?"  
  
    "Distasteful, human." Loki says, hiding the tilt to his lips behind his improvised breadstick.  
  
    "Right, you are not human." Tony says, pulling back from his stool across the counter from Loki and grabbing the salad he'd ordered too. "Here. I had a feeling you looked like a greens man."   
  
    "My... appetite is not what it should be." Loki says with a soft sigh, taking the plastic container full of salad into his hands. Shower and fresh clothes not withstanding, the god is not standing on solid ground yet. With that hole in his side he probably should be eating nothing but Jell-O and bread. His shoulders sinking low as he cradles the salad close like a prize.  
  
    "It’s okay. I can pop it in the fridge for later. Jarv, do we have any soup? I think I can make soup. It can’t be that hard to make soup."  
  
    "Tony. Please." Loki breathes out, drawing Tony's eyes away from the cabinets and back across the counter. "I do not want to eat."  
  
    "Okay then." Tony says, looking down at his pizza and pushing it away. "What do you want?"   
  
    Loki looks like he's been hit with a brick in the back of the head, Tony should know.   
  
    "Loki?" Tony asks around another mouth full of pizza, watching the god’s body language go from tired and relaxed to tense, defensive. Like a small prickly creature that's just been introduced to unfamiliar territory.   
  
    "Sit down, Reindeer games." He says, switching to the nearly ancient nick name just to give the god some small familiar rock to stand on. Sliding out the extra barstool with his foot.   
  
    Loki looks like he's about to flee but his knees waver, obviously cutting of his flee instinct. The god shifting over and sitting himself on the stool, still clutching the salad close to his chest. Vivid green eyes are like grass after rain, liquid and bright.   
  
    "What do you want, Loki?" He tries again, because obviously that question isn't something the god is used to hearing and how fucked up is that?   
  
    "I..." Loki opens and closes his mouth, his throat working as he sets the salad slowly onto the counter but keeping a protective hand on it. Dude is serious about his salad.   
  
    "You?" Tony tries, scooping his pizza back up and arching an eyebrow. "It’s just a question, I'm not asking for you to explain quantum physics."   
  
    Black brows knit together for a moment, a little caught up on the physics before the god nods, shoulders squaring back and spine straight.   
  
    "Then I would prefer to return to my quarters."   
  
    "Pick a bedroom, if you use mine don’t do anything funky. I do sleep in there sometimes."   
  
    "Your room?" Loki questions, his brows going up to his hairline and gripping his salad again.   
  
    "That was my room you woke up in." Tony says, pointing a finger to his chest before pointing it back to Loki. "That’s my clothes."   
  
    Loki stands to his feet with a bit extra color to his cheeks that for someone not so damn pale might be a blush. The hand leaves the salad though and goes to his side.   
  
    He looks stuck in that space for a moment before giving a soft bow to his head. "Excuse me." The god breathes out before quickly striding from the room.  
  

 


	3. 3

  
  
    Tony ends up making a call to Rogers, more out of necessity than want, he'd like to not burn any more bridges with the man than he already has. And he'd really like to apologize to Bruce. It’s not their fault things got so fucked up in that earthquake.  
  
    Loki's left his belly feeling like a knot of tension. He can’t figure out if he's doing the right thing or the wrong thing with the god. Clearly Loki needs help, but Tony feels like he's in over his own head.   
  
    He lets the phone ring an extra dozen or so times before it's picked up with a confused and slightly muffled 'hello?'   
  
    "Hey Cap."  
  
    "Tony?" Tony refuses to explain to him caller id again. Fuck. If teaching Loki electronics is going to be just as hard Tony's going to throw himself off the Malibu cliff side now and get it over with. "Yeah, it's me. Just calling to check in, you know me. Always trying to please."  
  
    "How are you feeling?" Roger's asks, a shifting sound in the background like the guy's settling into a couch.   
  
    Fucked in the head, thanks. "I'm doing okay." He says, standing to his feet and   
tossing Loki's salad in the fridge. "I just wanted to say thanks for... you know. All that shit."   
  
    Really they had done nothing for him, but he'd heard through the grapevine that the whole team had been on edge to get to him. As morbid as it is, Tony's glad they didn't find him, he'd never had gotten Loki out of that building alive if they did.   
  
    Rogers says something but he's not listening to it. His eyes fixed on the spot the god had stood in not to long ago. That haunted look in his eyes when Tony had asked what he wanted may stick with him for a long time.  
  
    "You’re part of the team here Stark, even if you don’t want to be."   
  
    "Huh?" Tony can’t help the frown on his face as he shoves the pizza box into his trashcan. "Now how can you say I don’t want to be part of the team? I made that team. Well, then I was kicked off of it. And then I was back on it. But if it-"  
  
    "You didn’t come home with us, Tony."  
  
    "This is my home too, if you've forgotten."  
  
    "See. That’s what I'm saying." Steve says with a sigh like he's to warn out to argue about it at the moment. There’s a voice in the background over the line and suddenly there Bruce's voice in his ear. "Hey Tony. You’re still alive!"  
  
    "I wouldn’t call it living, but yeah. Thanks for the worries."   
  
    "You’re not drinking, are you?" Bruce asks, although he can hear the chuckle in the voice.  
  
    "No mother, I'm not drinking. I just ate and-"  
  
    "And now you’re going to bed."   
  
    "I am a competent grown man."  
  
    "No you’re not Tony. Knowing you, you went home and tinkered with your toys for the last twenty four hours and just now remembered to eat something."  
  
    Tony pulls the phone down from his ear and frowns at it with honest distaste. Is his life THAT predictable? Sure it wasn't his 'toys' he was playing with, but substitute that word for Loki and that's been the last day in a nut shell.  
  
    "I'm going to hang up on you." He warns, walking out of the kitchen and down the hall. Part of him wants to spite the world by heading down to his lab but his feet take him in the direction of the rooms.  
  
    Bruce chuckles. "Just sleep. You sound like hell over the phone; I bet you look like it."  
  
    "Way to charm a guy." Tony grumbles, scrubbing a hand through his hair. Careful to keep away from his own stitches. "I always look good."  
  
    "And as your friend I want you to call me again tomorrow, after you've slept. We can talk more then. I want to know what's up your sleeve."  
  
    Tony pauses in the hall, peeking into the guest room were Loki had originally been. Bed empty. Huh. Giving a soft hum he arches his eyebrow, "and what would make you think I've got something up my sleeve?"  
  
    "You’re Tony Stark."  
  
    Bruce says that like his name translates to 'trouble' in some foreign language.  
  
    "Fuck you, man, fuck you." He says around a laugh, shaking his head a little as he comes into his own room.   
  
    Well fuck.   
  
    Found Loki.   
  
    Tilting his head to the side he looks to the form sprawled out on his bed.   
  
    "Guess where I am right now."  
  
    "I don’t think I want to know. No. Wait. A bed? Go to bed, Tony."  
  
    "Yeah. Okay. I'll call you in the morning."  
  
    "Do us all a favor and don’t. Call us in the afternoon. Sleep in you crazy bastard."  
  
    "Okay. I love you too Bruce. Tell Rogers... tell everyone... that I'm okay out here. Not to worry. People worrying about me gives me the itch." He says, listing to Bruce give an okay and quick goodbye before hanging up.   
  
    Tony tosses his phone to the desk before looking back at Loki. The god is sound asleep, the subtle rise and fall of his chest the only indication of life. Quietly going around the bed Tony sits on the far side of it, glancing across the ocean of blankets and sheets.   
  
    "Try not to wake up and stab me." He says, kicking his feet onto the bed and settling back against the pillows.   
  
    He's avoided sleep like a plague. Busying himself by tending to Loki and doing things around the house. Anything to keep from entering the dangerous lands of REM. The shit he’s done and seen in the last twenty four hours screams nightmares. Too many memories of Afghanistan have been dredged up. To many new memories created and mixed with it but sleeping to the point his bodies pulled the plug on his mind and when his head hits the pillows everything else shuts down.   
      
  
o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    There's something warm and heavy trapping Tony down to the bed. It’s a nice weight, not to soft, not to hard. The tickling breaths of air against his neck tell him everything. Sleep fuzzed mind coming awake as someone’s fingers twitch against his side.  
  
    Cracking his eyes open he gives a little smile.   
  
    Strange bed fellows indeed.   
  
    Loki is curled over Tony's chest, face burrowed against his neck. The god sleeps like a seahorse, clinging to anything in the bed like some invisible current is going to pull him away. Tony had thought it was just the fever but now he's beginning to think different.  
  
    Some part of Tony knows that he could spend forever here. His eyes drifting closed again against what's probably the mid afternoon sun, he settles back against the pillows.  
  
    He needs to work on his suit. He needs to call Bruce. Maybe find someone he trusts enough with the secret draped over his chest like a glorified heating pad.   
  
    The other Avengers are compromised by who they are.  
  
     Rhodey. Rhodey has always been trustable. Dependable.  
  
    Pepper too. He'd been able to trust Pepp with everything, even his own heart for a time.  
  
    Tony needs coffee and time to think before he can come to any further conclusion. He also needs Loki's okay. The trust between them is as fragile as a string of glass, Tony can feel it. One wrong move and it will be shattered forever. The consequences for both of them would be unthinkable.  
  
    "Come on, sleeping beauty, I've got to get up." He murmurs, stroking the silky black hair at the back of the god’s neck.   
  
    "No."   
  
    The grunted reply startles Tony a little. Loki was so still against his chest he was sure the god was still sleeping. Even with the reply he's unmoving other than the tickle of breath over Tony's neck.  
  
    "Are you awake?"   
  
    "No."  
  
    "Oh, that’s good. I was going to point out that this is a little gay when you’re awake." He chuckles, feeling those long fingers twitch against his side again, that rhythmic breath against his neck hitching as the god soundlessly laughs too.  
  
    He falls silent again. Closing his eyes and letting out a soft breath that ruffles the black hair. "I want to bring someone in on this. Will you trust me enough to tell someone?"  
  
    "Who?" Loki asks, his whisper soft voice not showing any sign of emotion but Tony knows it's there.  
  
    "I don’t know yet. I won’t. I need to know if you’re okay with it first."  
  
    Loki is silent long enough that Tony has closed his eyes again, sleep dragging him down. A combination of safe warmth and exhaustion still working at him.   
  
    The god’s lips brush over his ear as he shifts and suddenly Tony is awake. Embarrassing, unreasonably awake in all ways as Loki lifts himself up onto his elbows.   
  
    Tony's almost afraid to open his eyes as he feels breath across his face and silk hair tickle his cheek. When he does he feels open and vulnerable under the god, their faces only an inch or so apart. Those green eyes see everything from this close, no matter how much Tony wants to hide from the invasion he doesn’t.   
  
    He has to swallow a few times to clear the lump in his throat as soft fingers touch against his arc, a brow arching in silent question.  
  
    "I was on a business trip in Afghanistan when my convoy was ambushed. Apparently I'd had a price put on my head by a man I looked up to like a father. The weapon they used to kill me was one of my own; the shrapnel of metal are still in my chest. Forever inching closer to kill me."  
  
    Loki's eyes narrow and look down, Tony can feel his long fingers tracing the sensitive skin around the arc now, wrecking his nerves’ system in terrible ways.  
  
    "This prevents it?"   
  
    "In a sense. It powers a magnet in my chest that stops the shrapnel from moving closer to my heart."   
  
    "You truly will die with it removed."  
  
    "Yeah."  
  
    Tony's eyes go wide and lock onto the green ones only an inch from his face as he feels daft fingers turn the arc counter clockwise. The lock popped enabling it to be removed.   
  
    If Tony were to retell this story later on, this little moment in his life, he'd mention that he wasn’t afraid. He most definitely wouldn’t mention that even bat shit scared, this is the most erotic thing anyone's ever done. The trust in this moment a million times wider and deeper than the trust needed in sex. His heart beating so hard against his ribcage there’s no way the god can’t feel it.   
  
    Loki leans back a little so he can look down at what he's holding.  
  
    "The man who put the price on your head. Did you kill him?" Loki asks softly, like they're back to the pillow talk again. Like he’s not holding Tony’s life in his hands.  
  
    "I did." Tony's voice shakes as he says it but he's beyond caring for the moment.  
  
    "I killed my own father too." Loki breathes out and the arc sets back into place. Daft fingers turn and lock the reactor in once more and green eyes return to his.   
 They're nose to nose again for a moment, maybe no longer than a heartbeat, maybe an hour, Loki’s eyes searching him out.   
  
    It’s a test of wills. How far will Tony let him go. How far will Tony trust him, so he knows how far to trust Tony in return. A gamble on both their parts. Trust isn’t something Tony gives out anymore and he has a gut deep feeling that Loki is the same way.  
  
    The god brushes a hand over Tony’s brow his long fingers and soft palm warm as it travels gently through his hair. Loki seems to have come to a conclusion.   
  
    Fuck if he knows what that is.   
  
    Tony doesn’t even know what Tony wants right now.   
  
    "I trust you." Loki whispers before lying back down again. Setting himself over Tony's chest with a heavy sigh.   
  
    Closing his eyes, Tony slowly brings his arms around the god and lets out a rough breath.   
  
    Holy. Shit.  
  
    "Do you still wish to rise?" Loki asks after a calm moment, lips soft against Tony's neck. He can feel the bastard smiling.  
  
    "You know what. I think I'm good right here."

 


	4. 4

  
  
  
    The halls of Tony's stronghold sweep out and around in almost a circular maze, the lines of it are stunning, unlike any other building Loki's been in. By Midgard standards, by far the most incredible.   
  
    Loki had been wandering for some time after waking alone and deciding lethargy was of no aid to his mental paralysis. He was right too. To be up and moving and exploring the sweeping landscape of the building is most remarkable. Giving him something other than his own waste to focus on.   
  
    The view outside is most startling and disturbing to him. The ocean crashing upon the rock face that the dwelling seems to be set upon the cusp of. Its white capped waves not unlike the ones the rainbow bridge cross. Only he knows this sea continues on around the world, not falls off the edge of Asgard into an oblivion personally visited by Loki not too long ago.   
  
    Oblivion he'd risk his own life never to return to.   
  
    He spends no longer time than he must at the room with the windows. Retuning to the belly of the stronghold like house, walking slowly and trailing his hand along the curved line of the stairs as he descends. Coming to another set of glass windows overlooking a most different world.   
  
    A world that steals his breath.  
  
    The lights of the space are dim but he gets the idea that the room is vast in size. What little that is visible in the pale glow goes unnoticed by Loki, his eyes fixed on Tony as he works a most different kind of magic.   
  
    Panels and pictures moving around were the mortal stands, twitching his busy hands about. Manipulating objects, casting them away and building up new.   
  
    Thor had told him once that to watch Loki building spells was almost a hypnotizing act, he understands now, watching Tony work his magic.   
  
    His fingers itch to learn from it. To use it too.   
  
    Lifting his hand he reaches out to touch the glass between himself and Tony's world. To ghost upon such graceful lines. It's like looking in a mirror, not the damning mirror in the bathroom that smiles back broken and dead, but a mirror of what could have been.   
  
    Without command or movement the glass in front of him slides open, a hidden door.  
  
    "Welcome to my workshop." Tony's voice drifts over to him, the man still having his back to Loki.  
  
    "You’re magic..."  
  
    "Science," Tony says glancing over his shoulder to him. His eyes nearly black in the pale blue glow that matches the small bit of something in his chest that’s keeping him alive. There's a crooked grin on his face as he flicks out a wrist and waves Loki closer. "Not magic."   
  
    "Teach me." Loki says before he can school the words in his mouth. Demanding. Needing.   
  
    Striding across the great space and into the invisible net that Tony has cast about himself. It’s a world at his fingertips. Possibly many. Reaching out and feeling it; A static against the tips of his fingers existing where he can not see it.   
  
    Spotting a familiar shape and reaching out. Grabbing the weightless object.   
  
    "The Tesseract?"   
  
    "I was seeing if I could calculate your little hole."  
  
    "Ah." He hums looking down to the ghost of the cube in his hand.   
  
    Tony is standing back a little bit now, watching with close eyes as Loki examines the world around him.  
  
    "You understand that? It’s quantum physics."  
  
    "It is? Yes, it is considered a part of inter dimensional alchemy I have studied on Asgard and in other realms many things unavailable to most people, I did not know Midgard had this knowledge."   
  
    “I bet there are a lot of things that would surprise you here. Some of us ants are a little smart.”  
  
    Ignoring the jab and using his finger to alter the equation, working it in and then changing it again. The web of a world around him altering, flexing and shifting like he's making changes to a spell. Tony's grin turns wider, positively feral.  
  
    "Jarvis, are you running that?" He asks, coming up next to Loki, pulling up a side image. Waves and bars rising with the numbers.  
  
    "Yes, sir. With the changed calculations it does seem that a wormhole is possible if you use the Tesseract as a catalyst. It would explain the anomaly seen in New York." A ghost of a voice responds, Loki raising his eyes up.   
  
    "The slave?"  
  
    "Jarvis. An artificial intelligence extraordinaire. My right hand man."  
  
    "Thank you, sir." the ghos-... Jarvis quips.  
  
    "He and the arc reactor are really the crowning achievements of Stark Industries and the two things I'll never let the public touch. Well... the suit too. I've become a little partial to the idea of being the only one with that. I've found it's dangerous in the wrong hands." Tony's voice is dark as he says that and Loki has the unexplainable urge to harm whomever has attempted to bastardize the red and gold mech.   
  
    He hums in thought, looking to Tony across the blue glow and darkness. Sweeping a hand out and around him. "You will teach me your magic?"  
  
    "I will teach you everything, science, math, mechanics, I will teach you everything. If..." Tony holds his finger up, stepping closer to Loki and bringing that finger down upon his chest. "If you teach me your magic."  
  
    Loki has spent his whole life learning and refining the art till he's one of the nine realms greatest mages, a sorcerer with no equal. Looking about himself he see's that Tony may be one of the greatest minds on Midgard.  
  
    Magic isn't something to be taken lightly, not the dark arts that he knows. Not with the ability to tap into all the power in the nine realms.  
  
    Narrowing his eyes in thought he watches the net around them again.   
  
    Tony knows power and knowledge and still the man seems unshakable upon his foundation of morals, Loki could sway that. Destroy the avenging humans, rule earth. Usurp Thor and Odin. Show them all that he is indeed worthy of more than the icy blood in his veins. Their combined forces could be a catalyst to every dream Loki’s ever had.   
  
    "Everything?" He questions, eyes going to Tony.  
  
    "Jarvis kill the interface and turn on the lights." Tony says, the net flickering away as one by one the lights turn on over head. The room is grand; better than any learning hall in Asgard. Science and alchemy and magic combined.       
  
    Slowly circling around to see it all, much of it making no since to him and he wants in all of it. The possibilities are endless.   
  
    "My kung fu is strong." Tony says at his side, his voice low in approval.  
      
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    "I do not know if our magic's will meld in alchemy you desire."  
  
    "I’ve been known to have a project blow up now and again." Tony says with a shrug, walking away and picking up some paper work. "I'm not afraid of the risks. If I was I'd never have made it this far in life." Glancing over the top of a report he watches the god.  
  
    Shit. The man looks like he's died and gone to heaven as he wanders the workshop. His hand dancing over tables and eyes taking in everything.   
  
    “And you’re sure that you wish your knowledge to be mine? You do not fear what I could do with that kind of power in my hands?” Loki questions, glancing over to him, black brow arched. Pushing the fences, testing the boundaries.  
  
    “It can’t be much worse than what you already know in magic.” Tony admits in complete honesty. He realizes he’s dancing a fine blade here but too long ago Tony had stopped caring, stopped living. Loki is a breath of fresh life.  
  
    Loki pauses to pick something up off a work bench, his brow drawn in thought.   
  
    They'd parted oddly this morning, even if the god wasn’t awake for it. Tony had to detangle himself from Loki's seahorse hold and had to take the coldest damn shower he could muster. Their encounter had rattled Tony to the core, maybe deeper than the core into his sub-core. He cackles; wherever the fuck that is. The only thing that matters is he woke up feeling more alive than he has in years. Since he’d first come home from Afghanistan.   
  
    "Go on. You can touch anything you want." He shouts out as Loki's long fingers hover over picking something up. Green eyes dart to him before looking away and grabbing.   
  
    Fucker's left him with all kinds of disturbing feelings.    
  
    Scooping up his coffee he takes a sip and watches the god. His dark head down as he examines a controller in his hands. One of the dummy bots swirling to life and removing the object from his hands.   
  
    He moves on, all stark lines and shrewd muscles.   
  
    Tony had refused to look at the god in any way other than as a physician when he'd been sick- Stark can, despite what many peoples believe, behave himself- But it’s harder to ignore the man’s body now that those eyes are sharp again. Sharp like they were the first time they meet. The dangerous edge back even if his magic is still gone. The thrill. Everything wrapped up in one six foot plus god package.  
  
    Loki is most completely broken. Bonkers in ways that a psychiatrist would spend years working on but Tony is too. They're like two live wires meeting on a rare chance.   
  
    He just hopes they don’t blow the damn world up with the spark.  
  
    Loki has his back to him when he looks back up from his coffee, working something on over his hand and Tony takes note of it. Sitting up straighter from where he's planted himself like a loser against one of his work tables. It’s one of the repulsor designs from when he'd first fitted them onto the suit. The center of it dead without the reactor to hook up to.   
  
    Loki's eyes are down on it for a moment and Tony steps away from the table.   
  
    Im-freaking-possible.  
  
    The once dead center ring is glowing, the blue green raising from it the same misty shit that Loki's magic is. The soft smile on the god’s face is the most pleasing thing Tony's ever seen. It’s not evil or cynical; it's the true kind that crinkles the corners of his eyes in the hazy teal glow the repulsor is now giving off.   
  
    Shit, Jarvis better be getting scans from this.   
  
    Loki stretches out his arm and flexing his fingers, palm and repulsor out. The Mustang across the way from him is brand new and runs like a cherry. Tony really wants to see the damn thing explode. Anything to keep that smile on Loki's face.   
  
    The god shifts his stance slowly, wider, as the blue green glow grows and shines outward like a beacon. Fuelled by god only knows what. The hairs on the back of Tony's neck stand on end a moment before the beam fires; engulfing the Mustang in a toxic colored glow.  
  
    There’s no explosion. There’s no dramatic fire. Dummy lifts its arm before settling back down again with a whirl.   
  
    The fucking Mustang is gone when the glow dissipates. The teal shine of the repulsor dying back down before flickering off.   
  
    Tony can’t help but let out the whoop of excitement, his voice startling the dummies and Loki both, the god casting him a questioning look.  
  
    "Holy shit! Did you see that? Of course you saw that, you did it. What the hell did you just do? Can you do it again? Was that your magic? Is it coming back so fast? You can do that to more cars if you want. Jarvis please tell me you got that. I need readings right now." His eyes meet Loki's across the room. The gods look is bewildered and wild and damn it, sexy, as a ghost of a grin graces his lips.  
  
    Loki slides the repulsor free of his hand and flexes his fingers, setting the device gently back on the table before looking back to Tony.   
  
    "I think we can create an alchemy." He says, swallowing thickly before stumbling to the side.   
  
    "Whoa!" Tony's by his side in a few quick steps, grabbing his elbow and shoving shit out of the way to clear a space on the table. "Sit and then talk. Jarvis?"  
  
    "I have full readings, sir. The repulsor was up to four hundred percent capacity when under the use of your guest."  
  
    Like when Thor hit him with his lighting. Coincidence? Tony thinks not.  
  
    Once the god is sitting on the table Tony grins at Loki's almost sheepish look.   
  
    "Talk." Tony demands, planting his hands on either side of Loki's hips and leaning in close. Invading his personal space as much as Loki did to him on the bed. Turn about is fair play in his opinion.  
  
    "The power was always there. I only needed to turn it on. The devices work as a conductor, do they not?"  
  
    "In a round about way. It’s a one way force projection technology that siphons power from my reactor into a beam of energy to use at my discretion and that's not what you did." He ends on a sing song note.   
  
    "I merely siphoned the power from somewhere else." Loki says, turning his head with a little tilt, the smile on his lips that’s not all nice.  
  
    "From yourself?" Tony asks arching an eyebrow and leaning back a little, still keeping a hand by Loki's side, trapping him in place.   
  
    "It only required a tiny push to open the gateway and an equal sized amount to close it."   
  
    "Like turning on and off a switch. Damn." Tony muses, setting back on his spine and running a hand down his goatee. "What did you tap into if it wasn’t your own magic?"   
  
    "There is magic in everything. Everywhere."  
  
    Cryptic bastard.  
  
    If Loki can tap that much power into the repulsor with just a little magical nudge then the possibilities of energy are limitless.  Tony suddenly feels like a kid in a candy shop. His own lab no longer a familiar place but something new and exciting.  
  
    Loki is indeed a breath of fresh life.   
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    Tony isn’t mad, no. Tony is brilliant. He speaks the same language in heart that Loki does and that puts a chill up his spine. No one on Asgard ever understood him. He’d sit and pour over his learning’s and studies and tricks and they would scuff at him.  
  
    He'd learned to fight only out of survival with the spear and knives only to be mocked at for his choice of weaponry.   
  
    No one understood the powers of his magic; no one ever cared to learn them. Even the mage's of old he'd learned from were little caring of their own powers. The arts of magic are dying in the nine realms. Tony is like him. A cup needing to be filled with knowledge, not content to sit about half full.   
  
    He lifts his eyes slowly up to the man, a little dizzy considering the stunt he'd just pulled. Tony's eyes are on him. The mortals hands are gentle as they cup his jaw, keeping his eyes there, fixed on Tony’s.   
  
    "Are you okay?" The man asks, impossibly worried about him. He should be ranting and raving still but he's willing to stop all learning and destruction and the world to make sure that Loki is well.   
  
    It’s unlike any attention he's ever received from anyone in his life. Maybe Thor came the closest. Maybe. But there was so much about Loki that the bumbling oaf missed, where Tony observes and absorbs.   
  
    "I am well. I have overstretched my boundaries is all."   
  
    "That’s okay. You can sit your skinny ass right where it is." Tony grins, letting go of his face and setting his hands back down against the table again. Leaning in close. "I think it's time you let me play with your glow stick Loki." He murmurs, his breath ghosting over Loki's lips he's so close.   
  
    Close enough to taste him if he so dared.   
  
    Maddeningly close.  
  
    Licking his lips, Loki tries to concentrate on the words coming out of Tony's mouth, not the mouth itself. Tony's wicked foul tongued mouth.   
  
    The brief wondering of what else that mouth is capable of flits through his mind like a bird fighting from its iron cage. Momentary and violent and all but wrenching a gasp from him.   
  
    "Go, mortal." He sneers, angry with himself. His weakness and his stupidity, pushing Tony back as he slides from the table and stands to full height. Bringing distance between himself and the mortal man.   
  
    It has been too long for him since anything has stirred feelings like that from his body. It is the desire to learn from Tony and nothing else. His body has simply been caught up in the fire of his mind.   
  
    Waving his hand at the man to dismiss him, he turns and strides to the doorway that he entered.   
  
    “Do as you wish, I care little.”  
  
    Oh how the god of lies he is.

 


	5. 5

  
    Loki had parted after Tony had taken the scepter from him, the mortal intent on studying its metal consistencies before he even thinks of peeping into the magical properties.   
  
    He was more then fine with that. Let him dig in, stay away from Loki, and give himself time to think; to center himself before returning to the presence of the man.   
  
    The breeze of the ocean is cool and crisp under the midday sun as he sits, having returned to the room with the windows and found a door out to a deck over hanging the cliff face. Watching the waves in their endless quest to dash themselves upon the rocks.   
  
    He briefly wonders what fate he'd fair if he too took up the rocks in such a fashion, the toxic thought is fleeting though and blessedly gone before its set in his mind.  
  
    Loki had always been careful about choosing with whom he'd laid with on Asgard; unlike Thor he didn't throw himself upon any maid that was willing to part her legs. No. Loki's tastes, much like everything else, ran a bit more unconventional.   
  
    Horse excluded.  
  
    The mortal man is simply a complication he does not need or want.  
  
    Scrubbing his hands over his face he looks through his fingers at the waves below, this high up he can’t feel the spray of the salt water but it's in the air and each lung full of breath smells oddly of home.   
  
    His thoughts scatter and his heart skips as Tony sits himself down on the ledge next to him.   
  
    "I thought you'd spend longer in the study room."  
  
    "Workshop. Jarvis is working on trying to analyze the elements it's composed of. I can only sit around in there looking beautiful for so long."   
  
    Loki dares to glance over at the mortal, pushing his hair from his face as the sea breeze blows it around. "It is not found on Midgard."   
  
    "I figured, but I still want to analyze it, see if it can be recreated or if we have anything similar." Tony shrugs his eyes out on the sea. In the bright sunlight they look like rich mahogany, something expensive and well crafted by an artist.  
  
    Loki has to force himself to look back down into the ocean. To its waves. Chaos in its rhythm. Picking a rock from a nearby potted plant and throwing it out into the abyss.   
  
    Arching his eyebrow to Tony as the man holds out an open palm.  
  
    "Rock. Come on. If you get to throw shit, so do I. My house." Tony says opening and closing his hand a few times before Loki sets a small handful of pebbles down into it. He watches him throw the stones out into the wet oblivion.   
  
    "I was thinking today. When you where sleeping. You don’t snore. That’s nice. Really nice considering you were..." Tony trails off with an odd look on his face, like his mouth has gotten away with itself. "I was thinking about that spell."  
  
    "The one you ruined." Loki questions, throwing another rock watching it disappear into the waves.  
  
    "Bingo. That one."  
  
    "What of it?" He asks, another rock plopping into the ocean below.   
  
    "You really are serious about this evil, aren’t you? It scares you. That scares me, I think. Someone like you can have a fear of something. Supposed god and all that."  
  
    Loki tries not to prickle at that, frowning and handing Tony more rocks as he offers an upturned palm again.   
  
    Weighing his words carefully in his mind before continuing. He’s never had someone he trusts before and it's as unfamiliar to him as this confounded weakness is.   
  
    "How do you know I fear it?" He asks, deciding to take a round about way, curious to the mortals’ knowledge.  
  
    "You don’t snore but you do talk." Tony says with another stone flying into the ocean. "Kind of. I guess you could call it talking. It’s-"  
  
    And then Tony's looking at him again, his brows down in concentration like he's trying to see into Loki's soul and mind. Frowning hard at the mortal.  
  
    "I doubt my ramblings in sleep give way to what lingers in my mind." He snaps, hating his own transparency. For all his efforts in staying strong, stable, and not breaking down it's as though every brick he puts up as a wall between himself and the world, Tony breaks it down.  
  
    "That’s what you tell yourself maybe and for some people that might be true. But not you. You’re screwed down tighter than Tupperware and it's only when you’re sleeping does all the messy shit leak out."  
  
    Loki narrows his eyes at him, his hate seething in his belly as he contemplates the ramifications behind throwing Tony off the ledge next. "And how do you presume to know this?"   
  
    "I'm the same way." Tony says with a bunch of his shoulders, ignoring all of Loki's anger and venom as he holds out his hand again for more rocks. Waiting a moment before sighing and rubbing his still empty palm over his pants.   
  
    "Seriously, I don’t dig sleep. Not normally. My brain just never wants to turn off. Even when I crash out of exhaustion it still seems to be kicking, turning up all the horrific memories it can find out of its own morbid boredom."  
  
    Loki lets the man’s words sink in. There's been many times in his life that he'd fought against the pulling tide of sleep for fear of nightmares. Much more so of late. His mind pulled in two different directions, one of self guard and one wanting to trust Tony. Swallowing a few times before he glances to the man.  
  
    "I understand that." He says. The words sound small, like he's trying to cram a whole mountain of information into the one tiny sentence but he can’t force himself to say more even as the other words sit toxic in his own belly.   
  
    Tony seems to nod at that before getting up, content with what Loki is saying. Like he can almost read between the lines. Offering out his hand down. "Come on princess, I got you a present."  
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    Tony's sure the god's going to push his hand away so it's a pleasant surprise when those long fingers meet his palm.   
  
    It tingles.  
  
    That’s all Tony can think every time their skin touches. Like a low current of electricity travels through Loki's body at all times. Tony's not sure if it’s his magic, or if it's imagination. Instinct warning him to flee this threatening creature maybe, but then Tony was never one to listen to his gut because all he wants to do is press every inch of skin against that shock.   
  
    Clearing his throat he nods, glancing up at the taller man before turning away. "I found some of my old textbooks from MIT for you to dig through. It’s nothing amazing. Most of their shit was out dated when I took the classes, but that’s good. I don’t want to ruin that pretty little mind of yours by cramming it with too much to start."  
  
    Loki hums behind him. Following Tony through the door and to the table where he'd tossed the box of books.  
  
    "Really I should just hook you up with a tablet but I don’t know how tech savvy you are."  
  
    "Your technology and love for electronics does not confuse me, Tony. I'm not my bro- I am not Thor."  
  
    "Oh thank you god." He says theatrically throwing his hands into the air, sending the god next to him a grin. "I kind of told myself that if you were dumb about that I'd take a one way trip off the ledge." He says hooking a thumb in the direction of the deck they'd just left. The one Pepper hated because it had no rail and the one Loki seemed to gravitate to like a magnet.  
  
    "We can’t have that, now can we?" Loki grins, an almost not nice look that Tony's sure is just another special brand of Loki sarcasm.   
  
    "You’d have to find someone else to seahorse to." Tony fires back, earning a confused tilt of the head from Loki. Picking up a text book and blowing a shit load of dust off, waving a hand in front of his nose afterwards.   
  
    He’s about ready to delve into the basics of advanced calculus when Jarvis cuts him off. Rhodey. Crap.  
  
    "I've got to take this call, cupcake. You sit. Absorb. Read. Don’t fret to ask Jarvis if you have any questions." Tony says quickly, producing his phone from his pocket and stepping back out onto the deck.   
  
      
    He’d never admit to it but he spends more time watching Loki through the window then he does listening to Rhodey.   
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    The next two days fall into an odd game for Tony. Dodging calls from just about everyone. Ignoring paperwork that Pepper has faxed over. Watching Loki. Coffee and more Loki. Workshop. Loki.  
  
    The god isn't just a breath of fresh life to Tony, he is life itself.   
  
    It's like learning a new science field. The botany of Norse gods.   
  
    Lokiology.   
  
    How he'll pick any spot to simply curl up and sleep in. something Tony refuses to call cute but can’t stop himself from watching, no matter what project he's doing, the world stops on its axes so he can gaze at the prince slumbering on the couch in the sun. Physics book clutched to his chest and drafts of hand written notes spread about him.   
  
    Loki's writing is mockingly perfect compared to Tony's. It’s a sprawling handwriting that looks like something more from Lord of the Rings where Tony's old college notes are more like a doctor’s scribble of chaos.  
  
    How he'll throw things when he thinks Tony isn’t looking. His frustration volatile, violent, and normally short lived. His eyes burning with anger that lead to him turning away from whatever the source of his frustration is, going out to the balcony and watching the waves. The endless turn of the tide soothing the god in a way Tony doesn’t understand yet. He wants to though; it's unexplainable how much he wants to.  
      
    He paces and frowns and thinks with motion and action in a way Tony can relate to but he's also incredibly still. The world moving around him more than him moving around it.   
      
      
      
    How he blushes when Tony makes comments on how he's somehow magically produced fancy pants renaissance clothes that look a million times more right on him than Tony's clothes ever did.   
          
    He’s serious about his vegetarian diet but not squeamish to the idea of trying new foods. Tony's yet to find anything he likes, but he does keep trying.   
      
    How at the end of the day they end up back in Tony's bed. No matter how hard Tony tries to keep to himself at night the taller man always ends up draped over him, forever clinging like a seahorse. Tony’s more than willing to hold onto him, doing his best to keep whatever demons at bay that he can. Neither speaks of it. Neither admit that they find solace in their mutual hold.  
      
    Despite everything Tony knows he's only seeing what the god wants him to see. That there's so much more going on just below the surface of the god and that frustrates the hell out of Tony. Like he’s trying to watch fish in milky water, sometimes a fin will ripple the surface.   
  
    He wants deeper, he wants all of it, and if nothing else, Tony is a man used to getting what he wants.   
  
  
    Rubbing his eyes he squints at the readouts he's getting, the information streaming in from where he's analyzing the chemical components to the god’s scepter.   
  
    He was right when he'd said it was nothing on earth, nor any mineral ever hinted at in space rocks. Standing to his feet, he shifts back on his spine to crack it before reaching out and picking up the staff. Approximately six feet five inches in length. A perfectly balanced five impossibly light pounds. Tipping his finger against the ornamental spear head of it, he sighs. Sharp bitch too.   
  
    Sucking on his lower lip as he thinks, he eyes the gleaming tip.  
  
    "Jarvis, Loki up on the deck?"   
  
    "Yes, sir."   
  
    Right then. Taking the scepter up with him he finds Loki sitting once more out against the open ocean, the breeze blowing back that hair and ruffling the black silk tunic he has on. Kicking off his shoes he opens the sliding door.  
  
    "How is your side doing?" He asks, poking Loki in the back of his head with the non pointed end of the scepter.   
  
    "Better than yours will be if you keep that up." Loki warns, glancing over at him with a crooked frown that doesn’t meet his eyes. One damningly elegant brow raised in question.  
  
    "Think you’re feeling up to a little demonstration?" Tony asks, giving the scepter and experimental twirl in his hands but just ends up stabbing a plant.  
  
    "I think you’re going to stab yourself, hand it over." Loki says as he gathers himself up to his feet and holds out a hand for the scepter. He rubs his side for a moment as though making sure his stitches and healing skin will stay together before waving Tony back.   
  
    Loki’s hands move over the scepter like he's greeting a lover before stepping back further from Tony.   
  
    "It’s as much a weapon as it is a tool for magic. Like your repulsors, it conducts a spell." Loki twists his hands and crosses the length of metal back around behind himself and into his other hand.   
  
    "Can your brother use his hammer the same way?" He asks, leaning against the side of the house as he watches Loki twirl the staff about in his hands, the movements elegant even as the bladed edge cuts through the air. Tony's sure if a hand got it the way- well... the hand wouldn’t be getting in the way of anything else anymore.   
  
    "No. Thor knows no magic." Loki scuffs, shooting him a dull look before shifting his bare feet a little. With an elegant wave of his wrist he summons an opponent, one of his own doppelgangers, from thin air. The image wavers like Loki doesn’t quite have the energy to keep it up, making it easier to tell who is real and who is not.   
  
    It’s nice to see the god’s magic slowly returning to him. A sign of recovery in at least one area.  
  
    "Why not? You’d think Odin would want him to, better to safe keep a kingdom when you've got more cards in your hands."   
  
    "How observant of you, Tony Stark." Loki spares him a glance before the hologram attacks, Loki pars and strikes with grace. All fluid lines like water.   
  
    Tony assumes that's only right, glancing away only a moment before looking back to the fight.  
  
    "That’s why you did what you did, that's why you didn’t want him king."   
  
    "Because a troll would be more fit to run Asgard." Loki hisses, striking harder against his opponent, his face twisted up into a snarl. Catching the hologram of himself in the chest with the sharp end of his scepter, running him through the heart. Running himself through the heart. "Anything but a Frost Giant."  
  
    The illusion drops away as Loki looks back out to the ocean, his chest heaving with his breath.  
  
    "Anyone but you." Tony sighs; he didn’t mean to pick at still bleeding wounds for Loki. Walking quietly across the sun warmed concrete to his side. "Why?"  
  
    "Because I am a monster, Tony, and it would do you well never to forget that." Loki hisses, thrusting his scepter back into Tony's hands before striding away back into the dark recesses of his house.   
      
    Tony wants to follow him, yell at him and shake him and tell him how utter bullshit that is but he knows well enough that this isn’t the time. Sitting down slowly onto the concrete he rubs his face.   
  
    Loki's still such a mess inside and he's done nothing but spend the last two days tiptoeing around the gaping wound in the god’s heart. He wonders if this is what everyone felt like around him when he'd come back from Afghanistan, or later when his own body had been poisoning him.   
  
    He’s an utter ass wanting Loki to open up when he never does himself.   
  
    "Fuck Tony, can’t you do anything easy?" He grumbles into his own palms. Ignoring the vibration of his cell in his pocket. He’s tempted to throw it into the ocean like all the damn rocks the other day. Getting to his feet he picks the scepter back up and goes back into the house, compared to the warm afternoon sun his home is a cool dark cave.   
  
    "Do you want me to call in for dinner?" He calls out into the house as he pads quietly across the tile floor. "We can try something new tonight again. I bet I can find a Mongolian place that delivers. Get you some of that red curry, they can make it vegetarian. You like hot food?"  
  
    "Tony?" A very female, non-Loki voice echoes down the hall. "You didn’t answer your phone but you want to order curry?"  
  
    Oh fuck.  
  
    His eyes dart back to the empty patio then to the scepter in his hand before searching the room wildly for Loki but the god is nowhere in sight.   
  
    "Pepper?"  
  
    Oh god no. Not this. Not now. No. No. No. No. His heart couldn’t be any calmer if someone was pointing a loaded gun to his head.  
  
    "Yeah?" She asks, coming into the room, all radiant and lovely and everything he remembers her being. Her smile only last about a second though, faltering and falling away completely as her eyes focus behind him.  
  

 


	6. 6

  
  
    "Jarvis, I'm firing you."  
  
    "Of course, sir." The AI doesn’t sound regretful at all for letting this happen.  
  
    Traitorous bastard.  
  
    Pepper is a real cherry as she looks at Loki, who, for his own right, simply looks right back at her. His hair is messed like he'd been raking his fingers through it, green eyes a little too narrowed though. Throwing off the almost charming look with a dangerous edge.   
  
    "Tony..." Pepper tries, swallowing slowly as she takes a step back. Damningly Loki takes a step closer. Strutting up to Tony’s side and easing his hand around the scepter. Tony doesn’t think as he lets the god take it. Doesn’t realize he's handing a dangerous weapon over to an incredibly unstable, villainous god. There’s a chance he'd taken that little thing called trust incredibly too far.   
  
    "Tony." Pepper says again as her hands smooth down to her dress suits pockets. Her voice soft and panic filled. It doses the job of clearing the haze from Tony's head though and he blinks a few times, glancing to Loki and then back to her.  
  
    "Ah. This really isn’t what it looks like, well, kind of isn’t. It’s nothing bad. This is a good thing, Pep."  
  
    "When you said you had someone here with you, I wasn't expecting that!" Her reserve breaks as Loki stiffens at his side, glancing to the god. There’s a fires in his eyes that burns as bright a green as an aurora.  
  
    "That, what? Mortal, choose your words well for I am Loki of Asgard and have little patients for mewl-"  
  
    "Whoa now." Tony interjects, pushing a hand against Loki's chest and placing himself between him and Pepper who's sputtering and turning as lovely a shade red. "You’re never going to get laid if you keep calling ladies that, buddy." He says to Loki, patting his hand to the god’s chest before looking back to Pepper.  
  
    "B-buddy?" She questions with bright eyes wide and so very confused. "That... that monster threw you out a window, Tony! That monster tried to take over the world. He killed Phil!" She says; with each point her voice raising a decibel.   
  
    The presence of Loki's chest against his hand suddenly backs off and he tears his eyes away from Pepper to glance to him.  
  
    The god looks blank. Every emotion hidden behind a mask of steel that would rival IronMan’s.  
  
    Tony knows that's not good and the chill of it creeps over his heart like darkness settling over the land. He can’t balance things right now, he can’t comfort whatever wound Pepper’s just poked and try to calm her at the same time.   
  
    "Loki, go down to the lab." He says, drawing his line in the sand. Loki can stay here, Loki stays, Loki behaves. Pepper though will call in the big guns soon if he doesn’t talk her down.  
  
    Something impossibly looking like hurt crosses the god’s face before a scathing frown takes over, green eyes looking away.  
  
    "Yes, of course, the fiend will return to the shadows." He hisses, turning away and striding down the hall.   
  
    "Fuck, that's not what I meant and you know it!" He shouts, turning to Pepper and growing in rage as he snatches the phone from her hands. "The fuck? No!"  
  
    "Tony, you hit your head. He’s evil. He’s manipulating you some how. I can call in-"  
  
    "Stop it, right now. We’re leaving come on." Tony says grabbing her by the arm with one hand and all but dragging her from the hall, stopping only long enough to grab his shoes and keys. He makes it all the way to one of the parked cars out front before she pulls back from him.  
  
    "What the hell Tony!"  
  
    "We're going for a drive and you’re going to listen and not. Fucking. Make. Any. Calls!" He demands, realizing he's yelling at her because she's flinching away.   
      
     Covering his face with his hands and shoving his fingers through his hair, he swears; the mile long tirade of every foul consonant he can think of in every language he can speak. After though, in the damning silence punctuated by Pepper’s sharp breaths and his own racing heart he tries to calm down.  
  
    "Are you done?" She asks, her arms wrapped around her chest, like despite the hot air she's trying to stay warm. Like he's chilled her to the heart.  
  
    "Yeah. Can you get into the car?" He asks, opening the driver door of his nearest car, fingering the window of the sporty little ZR1. He’s curiously lacking the headache that would normally come with a situation like this. Maybe dealing with issues without alcohol has its advantages.  
  
    Pepper comes around the car slowly without speaking to him and he waits till she's in and sitting before getting in himself. Not bothering to buckle up, fingering the start button and pulling out.  
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
  
    Monster.  
  
    Murdering, vile, evil, dark hearted, plague upon what ever world he walks.   
  
    The woman is right; she sings the same song that his heart does. The terror in her eyes so much easier to except and become part of then the trust and hope in Tony's.   
  
    Fear and terror he can do. Has done. He is after all the monster that children are warned of. Even the man that raised him as though he was his own son kept him at arms length.   
  
    He'd destroyed thousands on his own birth world like a child throwing a fit of temper. He’d aligned himself with the demons in the darkness and set upon Midgard to rape it of its innocence.  
  
    Striding down the hall to the lab he calls his magic to him like a familiar cloak, it's thin and wavering in his own weakness but his sharp fingered rage holds it tight.  
  
    Summoning his armor to him in a shower of golden glow he seethes.  
  
    Tony has grown blind to the monster under Loki's skin, feeling he's dulled its fangs and claws with his wit and knowledge. His charm has done nothing to satisfy the beast. It still burns below the surface of this costume he walks about in. Clawing and eating at his insides till all that is left is a weak pulp that supports him through the hours of the day.   
  
    Tony must be shown the truth.   
  
    To stop keeping Loki as a pet and realize once and for all why everything should fear and loathe Loki of Asgard. Loki of Jotenheim. Son of Laufey.   
  
    To be feared by all, not a subservient bed warmer to Tony Stark.   
  
    Friend.  
  
    Lover.  
  
    The casket in his hands is colder than ice, drawing his attention down. He didn’t even realize he'd summoned it. The bitter cold biting into his Aesir form before his monster takes over.   
  
    Yes. He will show Tony just how much of a monster he is. Destroy the hope in the man’s eyes. Fear is much easier to live with.  
  
    He was foolish to desire otherwise.  
  
  
o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    "My god Tony, what are you thinking? Are you thinking at all?" Pepper, bless her heart, had waited for him to park the car in front of one of those make out spots that line the Malibu cliff sides. Off to the side are benches for old people to watch the otters play in the kelp.   
  
    "I'm thinking more clearly than I have in a really long time now, Pepper." He says with an exasperated sigh, rolling the windows before cutting the engine.  
  
    The sea breeze is getting chilly with the setting sun that paints oranges and pinks across the sky like icing on a cake. He’d prefer to be watching this from his patio with curry but he assumes this would have to happen sooner or later. He wanted to bring Pepper in. Just not this way.  
  
    "How can you say that Tony? He... he's-"  
  
    "If you say monster again I'm going to throw you out of the car."   
  
    Pepper gives a sigh that's all frustrated woman. "Tony, fine. Why is that man in your house?"  
  
    He's proud of her for not saying monster again; she's always been the diplomat. Leaning his head back against the headrest and looking out to the ocean. He’s spent a lot of time over the last few days looking out into that cold dark Pacific water.  
  
    "He was with me in that building when the earthquake hit." He glances to her, seeing her nod. They’d all known that. Tony had walked out of the building and said that Loki was dead though.       
  
    "He didn’t die. Well, actually I think he did but not for long. Just kind of a little heart hiccup if you ask me. Scared the hell out of me the first time."  
  
    "The first?"  
  
    He waves a hand at her for trying to get ahead of him. "He... he's not all that bad, Pepper. You’ve got to believe me here. He's really fucked up in the head, but I wouldn’t use evil as a word to describe him. Evil people don’t go out of their way to save your life, or the lives of every living being on the earth."  
  
    "Do you have proof?" She asks, smoothing her hand over her pencil skirt, her eyes down.  
  
    "Besides the fact that I'm here right now? No. Not really. I could take a picture of him sleeping. It’s harder to think of him evil when he's- what?" He blinks as she looks to him with wide eyes.   
  
    "Are you sleeping with him?" She asks, her hand setting onto his arm like a concerned parent.  
  
    "Yes. But god Pepper, not that way. He’s. I don’t think. I don’t know if he'd-" He stops himself, trying to count the number of times his eyes have meet Loki's across the room and he'd nearly passed out from the static shock there. The lust and debt of the looks. It’s a big fucking number.  
  
    Somehow to think of simply just fornicating with Loki seems... little. Lacking. Like everything else for him, he doesn’t just want some. He wants all.   
  
    "Think with your brain Tony, not with your dick. Please." She says, cutting him off with a shake of her head. Pinning her hair behind her ears. "You say he's not evil, but have no proof."  
  
    "I say give me more time with him. I don’t want Shield barging in and gang raping him. He’s been through enough."  
  
    "And how do you know that some morning you’re not going to wake up with his hands around your neck? I love you Tony, that's why I couldn’t be with you. But I can’t just sit by and watch you sleep with death."  
  
    He shakes his head, needing to take this further.  
  
    "He had a fever for a while. This steel bar, it went through him like a shiskabob and the infection damn near killed him. He cried to go home the whole time, Pepper. Do evil things cry to go home?"   
  
    "Then let him go home!" She says in exasperation, waving a hand out to the ocean.  
  
    "He has none, that's the kick in the ass with this, Pepper. He has no home."  
  
    "Thor-"  
  
    "If he goes back there they'll behead him." That silences her. Her brows down as she looks out at the ocean for a moment. He can almost see the gears in her head turning. Thinking.   
  
    "One week, Tony."   
  
    "One and a half is all I need." He says with a grin. Feeling lucky. Feeling really damn lucky.  
  
    "What happens in ten days?"   
  
    Now that's an interesting problem. Loki gets all of his magic back maybe and will save the world... or he gets all of his magic back and destroys the world. Humming softly to himself Tony glances to the sun sinking down into the water.  
  
    "Tony." Pepper says, her voice all warning.  
  
    "Give me one and a half with him alone. He’s learning things about earth. He’s a little less cranky; he's yet to throw me off anything. Give him a full night sleep, something to learn and a Caesar salad; he’s a happy guy.”   
  
"And what happens if the salad runs out? If he grows bored?"   
      
    Tony grunts and waves a hand at her. "Please, Pepper, I'm Tony Stark. Have I ever been boring? I don’t even think that word can be said with in the company of my name."  
  
    She doesn’t like it. It’s as obvious as the sun sinking into the ocean. But she's going to give in. Tony's nothing if not able to talk his way into or out of any situation. This is no different.  
  
    No.   
  
    This is different; this is unlike any problem he's ever gotten himself into. He’s only had someone else’s life so dependant on his. Only once. And he failed Yinsen. There is no way in hell he's failing Loki. He refuses to.   
  
    He’d lie on the line.  
  
    The thought is chilling and he wonders if Rogers would be proud of him at last, or simply point out the fact that the only person in the world he's willing to lay on the line for is a 'bad guy'.  
  
    "One and a half weeks, Tony. I won’t call anyone till then." Pepper says her voice soft and tired. Worrying her hands in her lap.   
  
    It only takes Tony a moment to twist enough in his seat to hug Pepper. She’s stiff as he draws her against his chest but soon she's hugging him back. Hiding her face against his neck and sniffling.  
  
    "Thank you." He breathes down into her hair as he kisses her soft crown.  
  
    "If you end up dead because of this, I'm personally going to kill him."  
  
    Tony can only grunt in acknowledgement. "I'd expect nothing less. Make my eulogy something cool."  
      
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    Tony drove Pepper to a Hilton for the night before returning back home. She'd decided it was against her best interests to stay in his home at the moment and he'd agreed wholeheartedly.  
  
    The sun's sunk down in the sea long ago. The inky black of the night sky only obscured by an off blue glow.   
  
    An aurora this far down? Must be some hell of a solar storm. Maybe one of the other secluded mansions down the Cliffside where Stark mansion sat was having a party? All Tony knew is it's cold enough of a night now that he has to roll up the windows. Do solar storms come with low pressure cells? Wasn’t it close to 90 out today? He remembers the sun being damn hot.  
  
    "Sir, I advise you to slow your rate of travel down due to the ice on the road."  
  
    "Yeah. thanks." He frowns, downshifting till he's crawling along, the California scrub brush white with frost, the clawing ocean waves frothy and sluggish.   
  
    What. The. Fuck.  
  
    There's a giant gleaming pier out from the cliff side up ahead, from the point of it a blue beam is shooting forever upwards into the heavens. Like someone’s turned on a homing beacon and shining it up. A bat signal to the gods.  
  
    "Jarvis. Please tell me that's not my house."  
  
    "It is, sir."  
  
    "That's... ice, isn’t it?" He asks, daring to speed up a little on the slick streets, the temperature dropping rapidly the closer he gets to home and that beacon of polar ice.  
  
    "Yes sir, the current temperature of the house is a blistering twenty four degrees." Jarvis says with utmost sarcasm.   
  
    Tony, for all rights, had planned to take a nap. Maybe still order some food. Really he wanted to get drunk. It’s been long enough since the bump on his head that he'd planned on drinking his bar dry before passing out.   
  
    Instead he parks his car and really regrets not having a jacket on him as the icy air hits his skin.   
  
    The door to the house is frozen shut but Tony has a feeling that spire of icy doom coming from his back porch is where all the action is at anyways. Hoping like hell this isn’t something he needs his suit for. More feeling like he needs polar expedition gear.  
  
    Coming around the cliff side of the house Tony's pretty sure that this is what hell looks like frozen over.   
  
    For some odd reason, all Tony can think of is that poem by Frost. How apt it really is. There's destruction in the ice, it's cold and desolate and full of ire.   
  
    The bridge that hangs out past the ledge isn’t crude; it's well constructed of gleaming clear ice and supports his weight with ease.   
  
    "Shit its cold out here... should have had a jacket.... why would I need a jacket in southern fucking California... should keep jackets in my cars… "He mumbles to himself. Trying not to slip on the smooth surface as he ponders the coincidence of Loki calling himself a frost giant, and coming home to a frosty hell. Narrowing his eyes against bone deep shivers he slips along, that blue fucking disco light at the end of this icy bridge of hell has someone with it.  
  
    "LOKI!?" He shouts, his voice getting stolen away by a bitter arctic breeze. The tall form of a man turning and looking in his direction anyway.  
  
    Horns- check. This is hell.  
  
    Black hair blowing out with the wind, his green cape flapping and moving almost in time with the ice sloshed waves. Red eyes meet his across the distance.  
  
    "Loki?"   
  
    "Isn’t it grand, Tony?" The god leers; Tony only assumes it's his god. The voice is the same. The body is all lines and elegant still just a little... blue?  
  
    "I think if this is your idea of redecorating you might want to think about moving to Alaska." He says, hugging his arms around his chest. Shit. He can’t even feel his fingers anymore and Loki's wide red eyes have that not nice crazy tint to them. "Blue's a nice color on you. It’s a little bit of a spring tone maybe but-"  
  
    "Silence!" Loki screams his voice loud and harsh in the bitter wind.  
  
    "What’s going on, what's with the blue box?" Tony asks, because he's starting to wish life came with a tilt shift, or a pause button. Anything to pull up a stop to give his pounding heart a break.  
  
    "The casket? Call it a gift from my true father." Loki grunts, turning away from him with a flourished turn. His cape skirting on the ice beneath his feet.   
  
    "You’re... a little…"   
  
    "Monstrous?" Loki hisses, turning to look at him. Those eyes are glowing like fire amongst all that blue and ice. Embers in darkness. Tony's sure he's going to have nightmares for a very long time about this.  
  
    "I didn’t say that."   
  
    "You didn’t need to. It’s on your face Tony. It’s always been on everyone’s face." He says with a sneer, clearly on a rant. Only there is nothing to throw. It looks like he's a little partial to the blue box, leaving Tony once more the object of his angry pitching.    
  
    Taking a weary step back Tony feels a pang in his heart, kind of like someone’s stuck him with a little Loki shaped dagger.  
  
    "So you’re a little different. We all are."   
  
    "Oh, how untrue that is IronMan." Loki says, slamming his scepter into the ice beneath them, the fissure shaking the structure. Tony risks a glance down to the icy waves below. This far out there's no way he'd make it back to shore or the cliff.  
  
    "We'd gone over this a while ago buddy, I'm Tony now? Remember? Tony Stark."   
  
    "Anthony, son of Howard Stark. Mortal of Midgard. IronMan." Loki says lowly, his ember bright eyes sharp as he taps a finger against the scepter. "How different are you from those around you? You parade about in an iron suit, boasting that you’re different, better. But down to the flesh and bones. How different are you? I think not. You don’t know the meaning of different."  
  
    The words are bitter and sharp and full of hate but Tony slowly edges closer to the god. Shaking his head as his teeth chatter. "I'm not. I found out a long time ago in a cave that no matter how hard I pretended to be better than everyone else. I wasn’t. I was some of the shitiest shit. But I changed that. I made myself better. I made myself different in a good way."  
  
    Loki's eyes are as sharp as razors as he looks at him.   
  
    "That what the hell this is all about? The fact that you refuse to change?"   
  
    "Refuse? There is no refuse, I am myself, and it is the rest of the world who must keep up." Loki shouts at him his voice tainted with a mirthless laugh.   
 Reaching his scepter from the ice, he points the sharp end at Tony.   
  
    It's a sight Tony's seen twice in his life now. It doesn’t get any easier.  
  
    "That’s kind of weak. I thought someone like you enjoyed a challenge." Tony glares, annoyed that the god has given everything up on something as small as a being a changeling baby.  Being different.  
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    Weak? "Weak?" Loki whispers a moment before letting the scepter slip from his hand and leaping for the insufferable mortal with his words of hope.  
  
    Taking Tony down to the icy platform he'd created with a crash of armor and flesh. His hands finding Tony’s neck and squeezing.  
  
    "You dare to call me weak? For what I have survived? For what I have endured?! I am a god! I am a king!" He shouts, shaking him hard and trying to not cringe as Tony's head cracks upon the ice.   
  
    He should be enjoying the feel of the mortal man’s chilled fingers clawing at his hands; there should be a thrill with the death of a thorn in his side. The bitter ache in his heart is nothing but a nuisance as tears burn in his eyes.   
  
    "I cannot change who I am! One cannot change who they are born to be!" He screeches, his voice sounding panicked even in his own ears as Tony stills under him. Brown eyes dark in the nights air, lips a thin blue line in the mist of his beard.   
  
    "Fuck... that... shit..." Tony rasps out, taking a measured breath, his throat moving beneath Loki's hands. Loki loosening the grip just enough for the mortal to squeeze in a breath to speak.   
  
    "You give up. You do that and the whole world will win over you." Another wheezed breath, brown eyes full of anger and sadness. "You fall into everything... they want you to be... you fail at being yourself..."  
  
    Loki's fingers slip from Tony's neck, staring down at the mortal man with so much wisdom and heart. So much more than Loki will ever have. The breaths he's dragging in are ragged and choked back sobs as he looks down at Tony.   
  
    "If you give up now, then you will be the monster the world wanted you to be... not me though... I bet not Thor too..." Tony wheezes, sitting up and pushing Loki off of him with a limp cold hand. Rubbing the back of his head as he squints his eyes. "Shit I forgot how strong a grip you've got."   
  
    Loki sighs, sitting himself down onto the ice and looking across the space to Tony.   
  
    Tony's words are right; the truth in them rings clear. The world expects Loki to be a monster, and he's doing just that.   
  
    "I don’t know how to change." He admits, his voice nearly getting stolen away with the wind. Pulling his helmet off and looking down to the gleaming bronze. Tracing his thumb gently across the design, seeing the blue of his skin and flicking his wrist. The spell that falls over him isn't his own, it's Odin's; the glamour hiding a monster even himself fears.  
  
    Tony quirks an eyebrow and Loki rolls his eyes. "Not that kind of change Tony, it's done with ease. The change of... myself. Be serious, mortal." He scuffs.   
  
    "I can’t feel my fingers or my toes, you tried to murder me. Oh look. I think I've got blue ball because they froze off... fuck. I think I‘m serious enough." Tony drones, scooting closer, rubbing the back of his head again before crossing his arms around his chest. "All this... cold, this normal for you?"  
  
    "It doesn’t bother me as it should someone else. Its soothing." He admits softly, his eyes moving down the icy way to the casket that’s sitting, open wide and shining like a blue sun. "I despise that. I despise... much."   
  
    "Huh. You know the easy way to fix that? Find something that you don’t despise." Tony's voice is a cold whisper in his ear that sends a chill down his spine.   
  
    He tries not to jump as Tony's fingers grip his jaw and turn his face to him. Swallowing hard.   
  
    Tony's eyes meet his for a moment and the cold around him becomes hot and the mortal's fingers smoldering like the sun against his skin. Closing his eyes under the physical onslaught.   
  
    "No. You look at me right now." Tony's voice is low and his breath graces over Loki's lips like a chilled fog. His fingers shift, combing through his hair in a slow brush that sends more shivers chasing down his spine and heat pooling in his heart and in his groin.   
  
    Opening his eyes slowly to see Tony, bathed in the blue light of the Casket. Cold and shaken looking. A man very much alive.   
  
    Damn the hope in his eyes that Loki wants to believe in.  
  
    Tony gives a soft hum of approval before his lips meet Loki's in a hard crash of lust.

 


	7. 7

  
  
  
    There had been enough times in his life when Tony had been electrocuted. The car battery incident alone was enough to leave his body with a nice little tingle that didn’t go away for weeks after the arc reactor had been in place. He knew the static tingle by heart, the rush of electricity through his blood and how it makes his nerves dance.  
  
    This isn’t the same feeling though. The high voltage hum wreaking havoc on his skin and mind is a completely new feeling that Tony is more than willing to completely absorb himself into. Especially as Loki gives against him, mouth parting so Tony can taste the god. The small sound that he makes when Tony’s hand moves down his smooth neck and caresses his thumb over the hollow of his throat.   
  
    He’s playing with fire and not getting burned and if that isn’t a rush than Tony doesn’t know what is.  
  
    Pulling back he licks his lips, observing the wide-eyed god with his kiss swollen lips and mused hair. He's never going to think of the taste of ice and cold the same again.   
  
    "How about that? Was that something you despise?" He murmurs. Brushing his lips to Loki's trembling ones in a delicate kiss, letting him feel the difference between passion and worship.  
  
    "I... dare say I need to try again, to make sure." The god breathes out, mischief shining in his eyes before kissing Tony back. So full of need it steals the breath from Tony as all of his blood pools south despite the glacial air around them.  
  
    His frozen fingers are numb as they dig into the thick leather of Loki's armor, wanting more, demanding it as they dance for dominance, neither wanting to give in and neither wanting to stop.   
  
    A shocked gasp wrenching itself from his throat as ice cold air meets his chest. Loki's chilled fingers dancing up his ribs as he pushes Tony's shirt up. The soft gleam of the reactor mixing with the blue of Loki's disco chill box.   
  
    "It is cold for you here." Loki's breath fogs against his lips as he looks at Tony with hooded eyes. It’s better than his rare true smiles and it's got to be one of the most erotic things Tony's ever seen.  
  
    "It's a wee bit nippy." He agrees with a sloppy grin, closing his eyes and hissing in a breath as Loki chases the goose bumps across his chest till those long fingers tap lightly against the reactor. "Can you close the freezer door?" He draws out with far too much effort, his voice a train wreck of gravely lust.  
  
    "Yes." Loki nods pulling himself up to his feet and away, Tony misses it. There’s a pain and coldness when he leaves that's nothing unlike the cold air around him. He sits like an idiot a moment longer before rising to his feet following behind Loki out to the icy point and looking down at the box.   
  
    "What is it?" He asks as Loki looks down into the glow with heart-ache written on his face, the emotions turning his eyes a clear color of watered down mint.   
  
    "It is the Casket of Ancient Winters. It is the heart of Jotenheim." At Tony's questioning look he closes his eyes. "The world I am from. My birth world."   
  
    Loki reaches down and picks it up one handedly, his face closed off of emotion once more as his skin shifts back to blue. Those red eyes down and away. Shame. For as proud as Loki had once stood, there's shame in him now.   
  
    This is the ghost of a man he'd seen ripple of below the surface. This is what he's been fishing for blindly.  
  
    Reaching out quickly he grasps Loki's free hand before the broken man disappear behind the beautiful mask, his heart calm in his chest because he knows this is right.   
  
    "Anthony Stark, of Earth. Eh. Midgard." He grins, shaking that limp hand slowly, red eyes rising to his in confusion.   
      
  
o0o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
    "Loki of... Jotenheim. Prince of Asgard.” He says slowly, for all of Loki’s silver tongue, the words are a first for him. They taste odd in his mouth, not bitter as he’d believed.  
  
    Tony isn’t looking at him like he's crazy, or a monster as he lets go of his hand and holds the Casket close, twisting the box closed so that the power will return to inside.   
  
    "I like that, it fits you. Like me." Tony grins, slipping a little on the ice as he steps closer to Loki, causing him to have to reach out quickly to grab him.   
  
    Keeping a secure hand on the man’s elbow as he leads him back to the concrete deck behind his fortress like home.  
  
    "You’re cold." Loki sighs, keeping his hands to Tony's shoulders. "You’ve hit your head again as well."   
  
    "You kind of did that." Tony grunts rubbing the back of his head as Loki leads them back across his own personal ice version of the Rainbow Bridge. "I forgive you, if!" Tony holds up a finger and wags it, stopping Loki by placing his hands on his chest.  
  
    Loki arches an eyebrow and waits for the stipulation but Tony's hands are pulling him down the difference it takes for their lips to meet.   
  
    Loki's not sure if he's ever going to be ready for that, the feeling of Tony's lust burning itself into his soul.   
  
    "I really should stop doing that." The mortal says as he backs away, licking his lips like he's trying to keep the last tastes of the kiss in and to himself.   
  
    "No. Don’t." Loki breathes out, not even recognizing his own voice as he pulls the smaller man back to him. Catching his cloak in his hands and wrapping it around himself and the mortal.  
  
    This fragile little mortal who is the strongest man he's ever meet.   
  
    Basking in their joined warmth. The fire between them. His arms holding Tony tight, not wanting to let go. Not for a thousand crowns and kingdoms. Not for his fathers or brother. He’s found a home and nothing can steal him from this one.  
  
    "Here... wait." He says, looking away to hide the heat in his cheeks that's all the way up to his ears. Sending Tony back till he's standing against the side of the house before, with a wave of his hands, he holds the casket once more. Setting it to the ground and digging his fingers into the ice. Concentrating hard and using what is probably the last of his dredging reserves to make the ice disappear.  
  
    The frozen water not melting, or vanishing into nothingness. It crawls slowly back into the casket. He waits till the last of it is gone, nothing left but the cold air that still fogs Tony and his breath.   
  
    "You are going to teach me that too?" Tony asks with an amused smile as Loki returns the casket to its proper place magically. "I've got to admit, that’s just a little cool. I could make it much cooler, add some pyrotechnics."  
  
    Loki lets his eyes wander down Tony’s form as the man leans against the wall. His arms are still up around his chest to protect himself from the chill, the arc eclipsed by his forearms.   
  
    Tony's the picture of relaxed. Even after Loki had came so close to killing him, a second time, he reminds himself. Shaking his head in wonder, he strides back to the house.   
  
    "The Casket only works with a Jotun of royal blood." He explains, giving a little shrug of his shoulders as he pushes open the glass door. The inside of the house no warmer than the outside. "You are not of proper blood; it would be like teaching you to throw a stone."  
  
    "Well that’s sucks."   
  
    He shrugs his shoulders lifelessly and watches Tony as the man brings up a screen from the wall and fiddles a moment later hot air blows into the room from the vents.      
  
    "I can see how it has its tactical advantages; I was an arms dealer at one point in time you know. Merchant of Death and all that. What better way to keep your weapon in the right hands."  
  
    "Make it useless in the wrong. Irony I know. Monsters creating such a brilliant tool." Loki sighs, removing his heavy armor with a simple spell and setting his scepter on the small table that adorns the living room as Tony calls it.   
  
    "Germans in the 40's were some of the most brilliant minds around, lots of people called them monsters too."   
  
    Loki only gives him a half smile for trying before sitting himself down on the couch, the leather is cold in the slowly warming air. He has no energy for Tony’s banter at the moment. Resting his elbows on his knees and hiding his face in his hands, Loki tries to block out the rest of the world around him.  
  
    After falling into an oblivion, he'd never thought he'd crave to be in a deep dark place ever again but now he wishes he had one at his disposal at the moment. Something for him to hide in for the next thousand years.   
  
    "Don’t." Tony's voice is behind him as the man leans over the couch and wraps his arms around Loki's shoulders. Tony’s whispered breath warm in Loki's ear as he wraps his fingers around his wrists and pulls his hands down and away. Loki watches the lazy way Tony's thumb rubs a circle against the sensitive skin on the inside of his wrist.   
  
    "Do not what?" He asks around the fire growing in his stomach.   
  
    "Don’t think. I know it’s hard." Tony chuckles at that, a nice deep sound that vibrates though his chest and down Loki's back. "Just, don’t think right now. Let me think for a while for you."  
  
    "Oh?" he questions, biting down the sharp reply about a mortal thinking for a god when Tony's hands start to slowly move up and down his forearms. The glide of calloused palms moving over his skin so delicately.   
  
    Tony's nose brushes against his jaw a moment before his burning lips latch onto his neck and just when he thinks he can handle everything the man can throw at him, just a little bit of a bite brings a moan up from his belly.   
  
    Tony makes an affirmative hum as Loki intertwines the fingers of one hand with his. The mortal’s still free hand moving to the ties of his tunic.  
  
    "And what should I be thinking then?" He questions, tilting his head to the side as Tony's skilled mouth moves down against his now exposed collarbone, he can feel his lips twist into a smile.   
  
    "You should most definitely be thinking about me, and sex. And sex with me."  
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    Tony’s almost too caught up in the delicate mix of tastes that make up Loki to hear the growl from the god. The grip of his hand locking on tight and then the world is loosing it’s gravity for a moment. His back hitting against the couch hard enough to force the air from his lungs and leave the room spinning.   
  
    Maybe he shouldn’t have assumed so much.   
  
    Loki’s mouth slams down onto his though as the god pushes him down into the cold leather, fighting for dominance and air for a moment before giving into the mouth that’s so demanding of his attention. Sucking at his tongue as wicked hands slip under his shirt again, his skin hot in the cold air.   
  
    “Fuck. Warn a guy next time.” He chokes out, laughter and breath nearly choking him as he cups Loki’s cheek and watches as the god’s tongue makes a slow stroke over his thumb. Those green eyes are nothing but a ring of flaming emerald around wide pupils.   
  
    “You told me what to think.” Loki says slowly around his thumb and for a moment all Tony can think of is that wet heat that’s enveloped his digit.  
  
    “Oh.” He groans, his head swimming with the possibilities for a minute. “Can… I amend that?”   
  
    Loki pulls back like he‘s been slapped, those shining green eyes flashing with uncertainty as his hands leave his body and Tony nearly sobs from the loss.   
  
    “No, babe. I was just going to add a few other things, like foreplay.” He quickly says, shifting up to his elbows and pulling his shirt off. The cold leather against his back is just the shock he needs to clear his head a little. Loki’s eyes are still doubtful, his brows drawn down as he worries his kiss swollen lower lip.   
  
    Reaching up slowly he smoothes his palm over the gods brow and watches him close his eyes, the shiver of need like a mini earthquake through the lean body.   
  
    “We… you’re upset.” He sighs softly, not used to having to tamper back his own lust for someone else’s feelings. Damn it all to hell though, Loki is just the being that is capable of rewriting every one of Tony’s idiosyncrasies.   
  
    The smile that graces Loki’s lips is equal parts insanity and lust, dipping his head to keep contact with Tony’s palm. Opening his mouth like he wants to say something but cant bring himself to it, instead he presses the open kiss to Tony’s wrist.   
  
    “I am a god, and admittedly a ruin of a man Tony, I am always upset.” His voice tickles hot against Tony’s damp skin. “If you suggest we stop again, I will murder you. Then have my way with the mess of your body.”   
  
    “Oh, that’s nice to know then.” Tony chuckles, dark and humorless as he rakes his fingers through Loki’s hair before letting his hands drop down and smooth over the ivory column of his neck, feeling the quick pulse there. He’s rewarded with another contact starved shiver from the god before his hands are pulled away and thrust up and over his head, held in a tight one handed grip against the arm of the couch.   
  
    Loki pressing his body down and fitting himself between his legs, the shiver this time runs through both of their bodies as Tony groans, a momentary friction striking like lighting through his balls.   
  
    He angles his hips up and grits his teeth.   
  
    “Again, babe.”   
  
    “I’m not fond of your pet names.” Loki growls, his teeth nipping into his earlobe but he rocks his hips again. The grip on his wrists grinding his bones together but the pain just makes the pleasure all the better.   
  
    His jeans are too tight and Loki is too clothed above him as he rocks in a rhythm as old as man kind. That skilled tongue leaving a trail of fire down his neck and over the sensitive skin around the arc before teeth marks his nipple.  
  
    “Ah fucking hell.” He murmurs, struggling under the onslaught of pleasure. Wanting to dig his hands into that inky hair that he knows feels like silk and run his fingers over the god’s body. Hooking a leg around Loki’s narrow waist, he grinds his aching cock up against Loki’s down thrust, the resulting shutter through the god’s body is accompanied with an uncontrolled moan. Loki’s hold slipping away from his wrists, his eyes closing tight for a grand moment. The ecstasy on his face nearly driving Tony to an early death.   
  
    Using his now free hands he tugs greedily at the silk tunic, slipping it off of the chaos god even as he’s still shaking from pleasure.   
  
    “You owe me new pants.” Loki pants, grasping Tony’s hair with his long fingers and forcing his head back till his neck is exposed to Loki’s mouth. Tony squirms, arching his back up and getting his arm under himself.   
  
    It was supposed to be a smooth move that would win him top position but the couch is too small and they end up crashing to the floor with nothing but a shocked grunt from the god. At least Tony’d had a nice soft landing. Grinning sloppily down at Loki.   
  
    “Oops.”  
  
    “The bed then.” Loki nods, giving an exasperated sigh. His long fingers running down his spine and over the spanning muscles of his back before Tony can climb to his feet. Loki following with still greedy hands.   
  
  
O0o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    They make it to the bedroom in a unhurried amble, the hall wall a landing place for a moment, where Tony looses his pants and most of what’s left of his virtue. Loki can still taste him in his mouth, the tang of his virility and potency of his blood.   
  
    The bed against the back of his knees nearly startles him, dropping him back as the smaller man tugs off his ruined pants. The sharp grin in the mists of his beard is wicked and full of promised sin.   
  
    “Don’t get stabby.” Tony says, placing a finger to his lips and silencing him for a moment. Raising an eyebrow in question and shifting his legs further apart as Tony’s daft fingers stroke his semi hard cock. “I need to know. Honest to god question. Have you ever… you know.”  
  
    “Ah. So this is what it takes to render the unshakable Tony Stark wordless.” His own words hissed between clenched teeth as Tony’s hand slips down to grasp the tender skin of his balls. “Yes.” He groans out. Feeling Tony’s hot mouth replace his hand for a moment, the hum of approval nearly making his world come apart all over again, feeling it all the way to his fingers and toes.   
  
    Tony’s only gone from him for a moment, leaving his head spinning and his heart racing for control. Lifting up on his elbows in a boneless lurch he watches the mad man with a tube in his hand and that wolfish smile still front and center. Arching a questioning eyebrow as his eyes travel slowly down from glowing arc to tight abs back up to lust dark eyes.  
  
    “We people of earth, we got this shit. I’d say if you don’t have any on Asgard, then… never mind. You know what. I’m not having this conversation right now. We’ve got lube. It’s nice.” Tony’s voice gets muffled halfway through as he holds the cap in his mouth and spends a moment painting his fingers with the clear fluid. Seeming to get lost for a second just letting his eyes wonder over Loki’s body before he settles himself next to him.   
  
    Loki’s sure his heart is hammering hard enough in his throat that the mortal can hear it, especially as he leans close to kiss him. His lips tender and soft and with nowhere enough force that Loki needs. It serves as a frustratingly gentle distraction as Tony’s hand slips between his legs. His hips’ jackknifing off the bed as Stark slips one cool slick finger past his entrance.   
  
    “Easy.” Tony murmurs against his lips, his own body shaking with anticipation but his kisses are reverent and slow. “Never gonna hurt you. Never.” He vows and Loki believes him. In all the nine realms, he believes this mad mortal will never do him harm willingly. Giving a keen cry of pleasure as he feels his heart nearly break and Stark adds a second finger and then a third.  
  
    It’s slow and reverent and Loki learns what it’s like to be worshiped by someone, closing his eyes tight as pleasure burns through his body and he lets the mortal take over his mind giving himself up.   
  
    Shifting himself between his legs, Tony falls still. Stroking his hands up his thighs and over his belly for a gentle moment and letting his calloused fingers smooth down Loki’s body, leaving a trail of shivers in his wake. Their eyes meeting in that space of time there’s no more world, there no god swallowing abyss, no Afghanistan desert, no Asgard or Midgard. There’s them and nothing else.   
  
    They can’t say the words; Loki understands that because he wouldn’t believe him even if Tony did say them. Instead the mortal leans down and graces over his heart with a chaste little kiss that says everything words cant. Slicking his cock up with more lube be lands his eyes back to Loki’s who’s watching.    
  
    He swallows thickly before nodding his head, giving Tony the approval he knows he’s waiting for, angling his hips up as lust pools in his belly. Stark’s hungry mouth catching his whimpered moan as he slips in.   
  
    “Fuccck…” Tony groans out against his neck as he settles himself in even though it’s Loki that’s accepting the invasion. Digging his fingers into Stark’s shoulders, his moan turning to a broken sob as the mortal moves his hips, the slow draw back kindling a fire and the first strong thrust igniting it.   
  
    What ever intention the man had for slow and tender die then and Loki is more than willing to keep up. Absorbing the pleasure and lifting his hips to heighten it. The sounds of their pleasure echoing through the room, polluting it with their love. The little feelings of Tony learning his body, and he his, punctuating the obvious pleasures.   
  
    His back knotting up into an arch as his cock is stroked in a calm and gentle grip compared to how hard Stark is riding him. His world coming apart on an exhale that sounds suspiciously like ‘Tony’, the mortal man following only moments later.   
  
    Mahogany eyes watching him with so much emotion as they both pant, Tony’s hands gentle as he clumsily pulls away. Muttering for a moment as he grabs an errant sheet and uses it to clean them off before tossing it to the floor.   
  
    “You okay?” Tony’s voice is nearly a whisper as he settles himself against Loki’s side, pleasant warmth that he turns to and drapes himself over. Seeking and finding that steady heartbeat and hum of reactor before he even lets his mind come awake enough to answer.   
  
    “Yes. I am well.”   
  
    Tony gives a little hum of response, stroking his warm palm up and down his bare back, his fingers bumping against his spine and counting over his ribs. Soothing him enough to fall into a light sleep.   
  
  
O0o0o0o0o0o0  
  
    Tony isn’t completely unfamiliar with waking up alone, but considering his bed companion the last few days, it is a bit odd…   
  
    Considering last night, it's hollow feeling.   
  
    Cracking his eyes open to see what time of the morning, or mid morning or afternoon it is he receives a stern grunt from above.   
  
    "Do not move." Loki growls, pinning a hand down against his chest with a warm palm.  
  
    Cracking his eyes open against the... darkness?   
  
    "What time is it?"   
  
    "Nearly to the witch’s moon. Stop moving." Loki demands, a green glow coming from his hands where he has them cupped to Tony's belly. Whatever the hell time that meant.  
  
    Arching what he hopes is an indifferent eyebrow Tony clears his throat. “And what are you doing?"   
  
    Loki's slow moving fingers leave a pattern of glowing Arabic symbols down from the arc to his navel.  
  
    "I'm making sure you are not with child, Tony, Jotun breed much different than Midgardians, A-sexual." Loki says glancing to Tony as his heart all but stops his chest. Forget the shrapnel, Loki‘s killed him.   
  
    Loki’s lips quirk in a barely contained smile, if not for that god awful mirth in the god’s green glowing eyes Tony would have cried.   
  
    "Oh god-"  
  
    "Yes. You said that a lot last night. I had hoped your vocabulary would return by now." Loki's voice is a little strained, like he's trying to hold down his laughter.   
  
    "I don’t think I like you anymore, get out of my house." Tony grunts but there's a stupid grin tugging at the corners of his mouth as he watches Loki try to concentrate and not laugh. "Really, alien baby jokes aside, what are you doing?"   
  
    Loki seems to scoop the glowing letters out of the air and flops onto his back. Suspending them there in the air much like Tony does when he works on the interface in his lab.   
  
    "I have been thinking."  
  
    "See. That’s never a good thing to do after sex. Didn’t I forbid you from doing that anyways? I remember strictly forbidding you from doing that. Someone around here has got to follow orders, I'm not." Tony asks, reaching out and pushing his fingers through the odd characters but Loki stops his hand, bringing his knuckles to his lips instead.   
  
    "My magic is returning Tony and after my use of the Casket both Odin and the demon in the darkness will now know at the least that I am upon Midgard."  
  
    "I take it the thing is one of a kind?"  
  
    "Much so." Loki sighs, his breath warm and soft against the back of Tony's hand as they lay side by side. "As much as I enjoy my head on my shoulders, I see the Demon as much more of a threat."  
  
    "And?" Tony presses, watching Loki reach up and alter the shimmering characters like he's working an equation. Or building a spell, he realizes with a chill.  
  
    "I would like to study the relationship between my magic and your repulsor, it seems to magnify it some how. I may be able to use that to strengthen the spell I plan on using with Yggdrasil but it is not something I'm overly familiar with."  
  
    "You don’t want to risk the whole world if it doesn’t quite work right."  
  
    "Worlds. Yes." Loki sighs again and with the motion of a closed fist the glowing characters vanish in a haze of gold and green.  
  
    "Is there any kind of way to tell how much time you have?" He asks, rolling onto his side and looking at Loki's profile in the dark.  
  
    He looks beautiful, relaxed, dark hair spilling against the pillow and green eyes alight with knowledge. The god hums a soft yes and turns his head to look at Tony, the dim light of the reactor in the dark reminding Tony of the cave in, the paper mill. It seems like it was a million years ago although the small line of stitches still mar the gods belly and back.  
  
    The close call of it all makes Tony weary. Things could have been so different, death or even if life had continued on spinning. They’d have missed this. The chill of realization has him wrapping an arm around Loki's chest and resting his head there. The strong heartbeat against his ear is soothing and he suddenly sees why Loki loves to sleep this way.   
  
    "There is a way." Loki’s voice comes after some time, Tony would never admit he'd fallen back to sleep again and nods like he'd been awake the whole time.  
  
    "Shishit?" He asks, wrinkling his nose and trying to will his eyes open.  
  
    "I will need things. Odd things."  
  
    "I'm Tony Stark. That’s like... Midgard for god. I can give you anything. Just ask. The world is my oyster."   
  
    He's not sure if the god’s taken insult to that or humor as he flops Tony off of his chest and onto his back. Blinking up at the darkness he's momentarily confused and pretty sure his life is about to end but Loki simply shifts about, takes his customary seahorse cling and settles in to sleep.   
  
  

 


	8. 8

  
  
    He didn’t want to leave, and that was a chilling feeling. He was happy in one place for once.   
  
    Tony's always been a wanderer at heart, when not grounded in a workshop with his hands elbow deep in the guts of something electronic, he simply can’t stay. Like the little metal bits hold onto his balloon string to stop him from wandering.   
  
    Loki holds the string strong. A living, breathing thing. A feat of magic if Tony's ever seen one.   
  
    Not even Pepper for all of her love and blessed grace could ever bind him to a place with so much contentment. The languid kind of bliss that has him simply wanting to lie in bed and trace lazy patterns across the milky skin, counting ribs and vertebrae till Loki squirms and holds back a chortle of a laugh.   
  
    Suiting up is a chore he suddenly loathes to do. Even as Loki watches with rapid interests as the machine fits around his body. Stepping up onto the platform to bestow Tony with one final kiss before stepping back.   
  
    He'd vowed to behave, although there was mirth in his eyes. Tony knows a lie when he sees one and he only expects to come back to some kind of mayhem. It wouldn’t be Loki if he didn’t.   
  
    Not destruction though, not ice and pain and sorrow. There are far fewer shadows in those green pools, Loki looks at him with a fragile kind of hope now. It’s breathtaking.   
  
    Returning his wandering mind to its proper train track before it derails on him and he turns back around and finds himself on his Malibu porch without his tasked items.   
  
    Tasked items indeed.   
  
    Mirror, a bowl crafted of pure crystal large enough to fit the length of the mirror, a candle made of bees wax, water from ice, a frame, copper wire, virgin blood, a veritable laundry list of bippity-bopity-boo that Tony could have cared less about.   
 The shopping list was odd indeed but everything was almost laughably easy to attain. Loki taking half of it himself with a flourished grin saying that sometimes the funniest part of these kinds of spells is the collection.    
  
    Tony had ended up with the Virgin blood.  
  
    It’s a good thing Tony knows of one still surviving over the age of fourteen in the twenty first century. That one would be a little odd to try and pick up down at the local blood bank.  
  
    Ringing around the newly remodeled Avengers Tower, Tony remembers when it was just Stark tower and in his opinion far more grand.   
  
    "Sir, would you like the suit removed?" Jarvis asks as he steadies his palms out and lowers himself down to the balcony of what was once his penthouse.   
  
    "Nope, not staying Jarv. In fact, if anyone asks I'm not even here. Back in Malibu sunning. Naked. Don’t call." He says, flicking his helmet back and striding down the steps.   
  
    It’s only a short elevator ride down three floors to the medical wing and labs where extra blood is kept on hand from each Avenger just incase of emergencies. Tony's more than sure Steve would be willing to part with a bag. Saving the wor’d and all that. No need to mention its Loki that's really doing the saving. Not yet anyways.  
  
    Slipping the bag of type A virgin down into a cooled compartment at his side he looks up at the sound of someone clearing their throat.   
  
    Bruce simply raises one eyebrow, his brown eyes more questioning than reprimanding. "And this is what's up your sleeve?"   
  
    "Ahshit. I was supposed to call you." Tony nearly smacks his hand to his face but stops himself before he can kiss his own repulsor.   
  
    "I'll pretend you did if you tell me what's going on." Bruce says, all calm and cool as he leans his hip against a low surgical table and fiddles with his glasses.   
  
    "I've... got a... situation I'm dealing with at home."   
  
    "Situation huh? About this tall..." Banner says, holding his hand up about six feet from the floor. "Black hair, bag of cats?"   
  
    "How the hell did you... no... Well... not so bag of cats right now." Tony sighs, shifting his feet a little; maybe he should have ditched the suit. Apparently he's transparent.   
  
    "I had a hunch when you walked out of that rubble. You made sure no one else went in behind you."   
  
    "The building was unstable."   
  
    "He’s unstable." Bruce says, rubbing the bridge of his nose before his eyes look back up to Tony. "Spill it. Tell me why Shield isn’t crawling up your ass over this."  
  
    "They think he's dead." he says, the simple truth easier. "I'd prefer if it was kept that way too."  
  
    "That for him? Do you even know how to start an IV?" Banner says with a shake of his head. Tony's momentarily confused, a blush crawling up his cheeks.   
  
    "Ah... no. it's okay. He’s fine now. On the mend. I could have used you back when I first brought him home."   
  
    "You should have just called." Bruce says, wagging his glasses at Tony. It’s too... surreal for Tony. Too easy.   
  
    "Who are you? What did you do with Mr. Green?" He questions with a frown, leaning in close and poking Bruce in the side of the head. "Why aren’t you trying to smash me for this? Aren’t afraid I'm a traitor?"  
  
    "Your survival instinct has always been questionable. As well as your alliances to Shield. Really I'm just surprised you didn’t bring him back here and pull your 'I’m Tony Fucking Stark’ bit.”  
  
    Tony huffs and crosses his arms over his chest, looking away and around the infirmary. He could have used all this when Loki was fevered and dying. Maybe he should have just brought Loki back with him... Loki could have used the healing hands but would the god have opened up to him with an audience or would they now be scraping little bits of dead mortals off the floor.   
  
    "Are you going to tell me what's going on? Or are you just going to walk out of here with a bag of blood and return home to... your... not so bag of cats?" Bruce asks, idly rubbing at his neck and blushing.   
  
    Tony blinks for a moment as he watches the good doctor before reaching up and touching the cool fingers of his suit to his neck. Oh. Right. Bit.   
  
    Clearing his throat he realizes this suddenly went from an odd conversation into the fucking twilight zone.   
  
    "So... "Bruce draws out. Fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt despite the fact it's more wrinkled than the things Tony pulls off his floor.  
  
    Tony makes a show of tapping a table with his finger.   
  
    Both avoid the obvious sexual relationship shaped elephant in the room.  
  
    "Place looks nice. Good to see Fury doesn’t have everything covered in leather with me gone."  
  
    "How long are you going to be gone with your... ah... project?" Banner asks drawing his eyes back over to him.   
  
    Isn't that the eight million dollar question? Sighing Tony walks a few steps, pacing as he thinks.  
  
    "I'm not leaving the group if that's what you’re asking."  
  
    "I'm asking if we should rent out your room, because I like the view from it better. Or maybe you need a bigger room? One that fits-"  
  
    "Don’t say cats." Tony chuckles, he'd always enjoyed Bruce’s humor, it meshed with his well. Banner’s a good man and Tony's found himself quite fond of his well catching alter ego.  
  
     "I'll be back here soon. No matter what happens.” He says, glancing around the cold steel and white infirmary.   
  
    He’s glad he took Loki to Malibu, not here. He can’t imagine him laying on one of those tables. He’d always belonged on Tony's bed. Even when Tony didn’t know it.   
  
    "Unless we're picking you up with a spoon."  
  
    "There’s always that. But the fun things always have risks." Tony grins, wagging his finger at Bruce.   
  
    Bruce shakes his head and says something under his breath regarding Tony's opinion of fun as he walks to the double doors that Tony had first come through. Following along because really that's the direction he's going in anyways. Both filing into the elevator and twitting their fingers as it rises.  
  
    "I'm not sure about the lines here, I'm glad you didn’t call. Especially with that kind of news." Bruce says, reaching out and stopping Tony with a hand on his gauntlet. Tony frowns at that and nods his head. Removing his cell from a compartment and handing it over.   
  
    "I'll call you from Malibu when I get back. That’s a secure line."   
  
    "You go on; your cat's probably chewing on the furniture." Bruce says, taking the phone and pocketing it with a grin that's all sarcasm.   
  
    "Don’t tell Steve I was here. He’ll cry for days knowing he missed me."   
  
    "Will do." Bruce nods, raising his hand in a farewell as the elevator doors shut between them.   
  
    Walking quietly back out to the patio he snaps his helmet back into place and rockets off into the New York sky, if he plays his time zones right he'll be getting home at sunset.   
  
    He can’t fucking wait to see what the night brings him.   
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    The disturbing scent of cooking road kill greets his nose as the suit is removed. It's not the kind of thing a guy wants to come home too and he wonders if Loki's gone and done something undesirable like fill his house with rotting carcasses.  
  
    "Jarvis, what the hell is that?" He grosses as he fallows his nose up and out into the bowels of his house. The sticky decaying scent is even thicker up here.   
  
    "I am unsure what Mr. Loki is doing, sir. He answers no questions."  
  
    "Uhgh." Tony groans he’d planned on ordering food, maybe some wine, maybe some hot deity sex. Now all he wants to do is throw up. Coming around the bend to what's got to be a bastardized chemistry set on his dinner table.   
  
    Huh... That wasn't there when he left. Walking closer to the boiling beakers and sniffing.   
  
    "Do not think of drinking that. It would end most unwell for your soul."   
  
    "Oh? It smells like dead possum." Tony says, glancing over to Loki who's stirring something over the stove. Tony's pretty sure it's not spaghetti sauce. He looks well rested and the slight smile on his face is a pleasant one. Tony likes to see it there, considering everything that’s happen between them. His hair back in a leather thong gives him more of a devilish look than Tony already thought possible.   
  
    "It has parts of things in it. Yes." Loki says with a grin, holding his hands out. "The blood?"  
  
    "Oh this blood?" He smiles pulling the bag from his pocket and wiggling it a little, the contents disgustingly sloshing. "Virgin blood? You know, I thought it was a bit cliché, but after seeing this set up. Wow. This is straight out of Frankenstein."   
  
    "Blood, Tony." Loki says in a deadpan way that spells I-have-no-clue-what-you’re-ranting-about. Loki is learning Earth’s little colloquialisms by leaps and bounds but many things still nonplussed him.  
  
    "Here. It’s disgusting. They shot at me you know. I had to kill Steve to get that."   
  
    "The... patriotic one?" Loki asks unfazed by Tony's line of bullshit, taking the bag and retrieving a bowl from a small stack he's got going now with various... things in it. Things he's sure weren’t in his house before hand. Picking up a twig and sniffing it. "It's no surprise for me to know that he is a virgin."   
  
    Tony shrugs and tosses the twig back into the bowl as Loki uses an odd looking knife to cut open the bag. The blood pouring tackily over the twigs and ohgod is that a chicken foot?  
  
    "So I'm going to assume this isn't dinner."   
  
    Loki gives nothing more than a short nod as he empties the last of the bag into the bowl and then adds a dash of what looks to be rock salt.  
  
    "And now you’re elbow deep in voodoo...."   
  
    "It is a complex druid spell." The god mutters, doing his best to ignore Tony as he comes around the table and trails his hand over Loki's lean leather covered hip. The god merely gives a wiggle in response as he pours whatever the fuck that awful smelling stuff is into the bowl. Yellow smoke rising up from it.     Tony watches, equal parts fascinated and determined to distract Loki.   
  
    Deciding that he's getting nowhere in the learning department he rests his head down between the gods shoulder blades and smoothes his hands around the front of Loki's hips and over his thighs. The tell-tell hitch in the god’s breath all Tony needs to hear.   
  
  
o0o00o0o0   
  
  
    "There must be some part of the word complex that you do not understand." Loki says swallowing thickly as heat burns through his insides, an all consuming fire called Tony Stark.   
  
    "You do seem to be having trouble concentrating. Maybe I shouldn’t put my hand here." Tony muses, his voice a gravely combination of mirth and lust as he smoothes his palm under Loki's tunic and against his belly.   
  
    Loki's hands slip from the bowl he's holding and press down against the table as Tony's fingers make a slow burning descent down to fiddle with the simple button snaps of his pants.   
  
    "I most definitely shouldn't do this..." Tony drawls, the mortal man’s sneaky fingers nearly distract him from the feel of his hips grinding softly against his ass, the moan it draws from Tony though is enough to shake a shiver from his spine as his eyes flutter closed.   
  
    He was doing something. Something important but as Tony's fingers work finally past his pants’ waistline and those incredibly gentle callused fingers brush against his already aching shaft all thoughts leave his mind. His hips jerking into the contact on instinct alone as he bites back a moan.   
  
    It should have came to no surprise to him that Tony would be as skilled in the finer arts of pleasure as he is in everything else the man seems to do. Sometimes in life though, it's the pleasant surprises that make it enjoyable.   
  
    Loki doesn’t fight against the moans as Tony's hand falls into a rhythm that matches the push and draw of his own hips against his ass and suddenly there is far too much clothes on his body. Groaning against the onslaught of pleasure and the storm it builds with it.   
  
    And then Tony is stopping, his breath panting against Loki's back and damn it to all. "Don’t stop!" He demands with a groan that's all sexual frustration.   
  
    "Something’s on fire." Tony groans, his own breath coming in deep swallows.   
  
    His eyes snap open and he stumbles against the table as he grabs for the bowl resting above the fire that's now smoking. "Complicated!" He squeaks out, his voice a ruin of shock and frustration.   
  
    Tony barks out a laugh and backs away, giving him room to empty the bowls together before everything is ruined.   
  
    "You’re ill ruled by your dick Tony, this is important."  
  
    "I didn’t hear you bitching a moment ago." Tony shrugs and watches him for a moment before pulling himself away from the kitchen to the side bar that Tony gravitates to at all times like a small alcohol filled moon.   
  
    "If anyone is a bitch in heat, it is you." Loki says with carelessly little venom in his voice, catching the sight of Tony raising the glass in hand in some kind of off salute to the statement.  
  
    "I ran into Bruce over at the tower."  
  
    "That eyesore of a building. Yes. What of the dull beast?" Loki asks, not looking to Tony as he works.  
  
    "He says he would have helped when you were out of it."   
 This does give Loki pause, glancing up from the boiling pot and arching an eyebrow in consideration.   
  
    "I've got to call him later on today; I wouldn’t mind making it a video call and you joining in. I think it might do some good."   
  
    Curious indeed maybe the avenging humans aren't as close knit to their organization as Loki had first surmised. Yes, under a threat they draw in tight together like a pack of beasts warding off a lion but in their daily lives they seem to be as far spread as the wind.   
  
    "Mayhaps I will." Mixing the brew together and adding it with the rest of the items in the pot he whispers over it the proper incantation, binding the ingredients together for potency before adding a lid and turning the flame down low.   
  
    "Right then, what is all this shit?" Tony asks, bringing his drink back to the table with him but keeping his damning hands to himself for now. Not that it did Loki any good, with the rush of completing the potion over he's left with nothing but the steady, uncomfortable ache between his legs.  
  
    "As I said; it is a druid spell." He sighs, walking away from the table and sitting himself onto the couch with a flourished flop. Shifting a moment before finding himself a comfortable position for a long wait.   
  
    "I thought you were Norse?" Tony asks, still poking about the now empty beakers he'd used to cook the components.   
  
    "I am not. I am Jotun. The Norse merely worshiped the Asgardians bea-" Tony cuts him off with his fingers to his lips. Passing a short glass of scotch into his hands before sitting next to him.   
  
    "Okay. I get that. How do you know Druid spells?"   
  
    Letting out an exasperated sighs and drinking the burning contents in his glass with one swallow Loki glances to him. "Unlike Thor and all those other blundering idiots, I've been to Midgard many times through the years. One of the times was when the Druids were at their height of power. I tricked them into teaching me their nature of spells."  
  
    "How not nice of you."   
  
    "Few mages are willing to give up the information they have."  
  
    "And you?" Tony asks, turning away from the bay windows to look at Loki. Loki had already tried to think out the idea of teaching Tony magic. To undertake a pupil was nothing like Tony giving him books of science. For that the knowledge was already out there in the world, he was simply receiving it from the best source.   
  
    A pupil of a mage is a deeply rooted bond as the one freely gives magic to the other. A symbolic relationship that over time, tends to end ill for one or the other due to magic’s well known traitorous ways.  
  
    "No. For you, it is freely given." He says, balancing his glass on his thigh and leaning close enough to smell the alcohol off of Tony's breath, the lingering scent of metal and machine oil clinging to the man’s skin. Perfuming him in a scent that is uniquely his, brushing his nose against the sensitive skin of the mortal’s throat he smiles.  
  
    "I'm special." Tony grins, the antics in his voice are empty though, he looks away and back down to his glass, breaking the contact. The momentary betrayal of mahogany eyes showing that Tony Stark indeed does not believe that statement.   
  
    How odd...   
  
    "The brew will take three days of setting before I can complete the ward to see how Yggdrasil's already breached barrier is fairing against the demon."  
  
    Tony makes a soft noise in the back of his throat of approval before crossing the short distance between them in a demanding kiss.   
  
    "My kitchen still smells like dead possum."  
  
    "Then build me a lab where I can make my potions at my whim." He all but purrs as Tony removes his glass from his thigh and proceeds to finish what he'd started earlier.

 


	9. 9

  
    It had taken great efforts on Tony's behalf to coax Loki to not hold the video conference with Bruce while in full Asgardian battlement. Or helmet, or scepter, or disturbingly large snakes.  
  
    What ever post blowjob relaxation time there should have been between them was sacrificed when Tony suggested they make the call. Since then Loki's been more than a little standoffish. His banter holding more bite to it than customary.   
  
    Tony had been reduced once more the Evolutionary Larva. Joy.  
  
    Sitting at his desk he swivels his chair a few times before calling up the interface. "Jarvis, bring up my cell phone, its Bruce’s' phone now, update the phonebook on that."  
  
    "Already done, sir." Jarvis says before the most annoying tone on earth starts to sound. It takes a total of two rings for Bruce to pick it up, the guy sounds a little out of breath across the line.  
  
    "Tony! Hey. You caught me off guard. It’s been a few hours."  
  
    "Yeah. I got busy. I can talk now. Why don’t you go up to the roof and check out the stars I think Asgard is visible this time of year." He says, settling back in his seat and waiting for the other man to go up.  
  
    Tony had set up the rooftop of Stark Tower with an array of signal blocking tech, it hadn’t come in useful at all when someone had decided to try and open a dimensional portal up there but it was still handy to have on a day to day I-work-with-spies kind of situations.   
  
    Rotating his chair to watch Loki across the lab as he listens to the soft sounds of movement over the phone. The god is fiddling with a screwdriver and trying to fake interest in the blueprints on the table next to him. Maybe he's just giving himself something in hand to throw at Tony in his next fit of rage. It really has been one of those last few hours.  
  
    The sound of Bruce beating feet up the stairs is eclipsed with a cthunk of a door opening and closing.   
  
    "Okay. I can talk now."  
  
    "That’s nice. Switch over to video conversation. I think I want this a little eye to eye." He says, turning away from the quietly brooding god and back to the interface.  
  
    Bruce tumbles over the line and a moment later a slightly grainy feed comes up on the interface. Tony smiles brightly at it.  
  
    "Nice to see you’re still alive." Bruce says, narrowing his eyes and pushing his glasses up his nose like he's concentrating on the small screen of the phone. "You’ve got company I see."   
  
    "Oh, him?" Tony blinks and tilts his head back to look at a momentarily upside down Loki across the room watching with interest. "Come here. I said I wanted you part of this."  
  
    "So you can display me to the dull beast?" Loki questions his smile all sharp teeth and even sharper eyes. “I would rather not.”  
  
    "Will you-" Tony cuts of his frustrated bark by pinching his nose and leveling his look back to Bruce.   
  
    The good doctor doesn’t look fazed in the least just like he’s holding back ill contained curiosity. Tony holds up a hand in the universal 'give me a moment' as he gets up and strides across the room.   
  
    Loki's spine straightens and his grip on the screw driver turns white knuckled as he approaches. What ever toxic thoughts are traveling through Loki's mind Tony's sorry for them. He’s still learning the rules of the odd dance he and Loki have going but he's pretty sure stabbing wasn’t part of the steps in the manual he got.  
  
    "He’s not big and green and going to beat you against the floor. Please." Tony says in a low enough voice that no matter how good his speakers are, Banner can’t hear it. Loki's eyes only narrow into poison green slits of seething distrust and anger.   
  
    "Please." Tony tries again, even softer this time as he holds out his hand for Loki's. It takes a moment, and a million emotions flit over Loki’s face before he reaches out and sets his subtly shaking hand it into his. Tony doesn’t use it to lead him over to his desk instead he brings the palm against his arc reactor under his chest. Quietly watching as Loki draws in a shuttering breath and closes his eyes. His long fingers clenching in the fabric around his reactor like he wants to rip it out... or cling to it.  
  
    Tony doesn’t say stupid things like its okay, or that Loki can leave upstairs. Sentimental shit he knows would just piss him off if the situation was reversed and he had to go face to face with someone who did honestly beat the life out of him.   
  
    Tony just holds his hand there against his reactor, rubbing small circles on the inside of Loki's wrist with his thumb till some of the tension leaves the god’s shoulders and those green eyes slowly open up once more.   
  
    He offers Loki his best smile and arches an eyebrow. "Do we need a kiss?" He whispers as he lets Loki take his hand back.   
  
    "I think I hate you this moment. Your beard disgusts me." Loki says loud enough for Bruce to hear because the man is coughing back a chuckle on the screen. For what it's worth Loki does walk across the lab and over to the interface, taking his place behind Tony's desk chair with his hands clasped behind his back. His face schooled into something closed off and diplomatic. Looking quite like the powerful prince even without the armor.   
  
    Bruce shifts a little, the screen bouncing with the movement, "Ah, hi?"  
  
    Loki tilts his head in acknowledgment.  
  
    "Come on! See. That wasn’t so bad! We can all go out now and get beer and watch baseball and-" Tony shuts his mouth at the glare that comes from Loki. Taking his seat back in his desk chair like a punished child.   
  
    Bruce is smiling again though like the bastard is actually enjoying watching Tony squirm under the god’s glare.   
  
    "Okay, so where do we start?"  
  
    "How about from the top? That seems simple enough." Bruce says, the screen shifting for a moment as he sits on an air vent or something. Raking his fingers through his wavy hair with a little weary sigh.   
  
    "Start with how this." He waves his free hand, obviously referencing Tony and Loki standing in one room and not murdering each other and possibly almost displaying affection from a distance, "Started."  
  
    So Tony does. He tells him about the earthquake, and Loki's spell. Loki fills in the bits he can’t; the bits about the tree of nine realms and the demon in the darkness Loki had made the deal with when he fell from Asgard. He gives the barest details about the fever and blood and Loki ends up having to heft up his tunic to show the stitches over the phone. Bruce actually seems pleased with Tony's patch up job.  
  
    They leave out little parts like the Casket and sex.   
  
    When they end up to current Tony's shocked to see they've been at this for over two hours, Loki's arms lazily crossed on the back of his desk chair and his eyes aren't quite as sharp as they were a while ago. He looks tired. Tony realizes, a protective need flaming through his heart as he wants to pull Loki into the bed and hold him close as he sleeps.   
  
    Bruce is rubbing his eyes like he's tired over there too, "That’s a lot to swallow, but I'm trying. You've got my hand if you need any help doing this and I won’t say a word to anyone over here till you want me to."   
  
    Good Ol' Bruce. Smiling, Tony feels like hugging the guy but the couple thousand mile difference kind of stops him. “It’s good to know you’re on our team.”  
  
    "I'm going to try and steal some food from Steve, you two... yeah." Bruce sighs and shakes his head, Loki unfolding himself to his full height once more and offering a nod before walking away across the lab leaving Tony to the farewells.   
  
    "I'll call you when I can, and make sure you’re up to date once the spell is complete." Tony offers, tearing his eyes off of Loki's retreating form.   
  
    "You do that; I'll do my best to keep everyone out of your hair. That new project you’re working on seems to be coming along well enough but it's a little obvious how volatile it still is." Bruce says with a tired smile before disconnecting the call.   
  
    As a cold sort of silence fills the room he swivels his chair to look at Loki who's once again standing by one of the tables, pushing and tweaking cables that hang down from the inside of a bot he'd been repairing long before this all happened.   
  
      
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0  
  
  
    "That went well. I think it went well. It went well for me anyways. You look..."  
  
    "Choose your words carefully, Tony." Loki warns letting the wires drop from his hands.  
  
    "You look tired." Tony says softly, the chair squeaking across the room and Loki glances to see the mortal kicking his feet up onto the table.  
  
    "I feel tired." He admits, turning and leaning his hip against the workbench. Crossing his arms over his chest. He feels tired and old, far older than he's ever felt. The world a heavy yolk on his shoulders weighing him down till the only thing keeping him standing is his steel pride.  
  
    The man behind the beast was everything Loki had secretly feared he would be. Brilliant and observant. Not quite to the degree as Tony but still unnervingly so. Loki has spent so many years with such dull minded men at his side that to have brilliance bearing down on him it is disturbing.  Midgard is not what he’d originally thought it to be.   
  
    "Come’re." Tony says, shifting how he's sitting and waving for him to come over with a twitch of his wrist.   
  
    He's too worn and wasted to deny him, to stubbornly gloat that he, Loki; a god, does not need coddling.   
  
    He wants it. From this selfish, stupid... perfect mortal man, Loki wants it.   
  
    Letting Tony lead him up stairs and to the soft large bed he's grown so fond of.   
  
    "He is a wise man." He says into the darkness, lying with his head against Tony's chest. That strong beat in his ear with the hum of the reactor. It’s a sound Loki's not sure how he'll ever sleep the same without it again.   
  
    "Bruce?" Tony grunts, shifting a little to slip the leather thong from his hair and comb his fingers though the curled ends. "Yeah. He’s a bit of a smart guy. Not like me smart. No one is as smart as me."  
  
    "No one is as modest as you." He says dully, painting his fingers with the arc's light as he traces the disk.  
  
    Tony's chuckle a pleasing rumble up from his chest.   
  
    The room falling back into a gentle warm silence. Letting his eyes fall closed for a moment, the feel of Tony’s fingers stroking against his scalp and down his neck lulling him. Twitching back to awareness as Tony shifts a little.  
  
    Drawing his hand up to Tony's chin he grips his beard growth and pulls him till the mortal’s eyes are looking through the darkness to him. The crooked smile there turns Loki's insides to liquid.   
  
    "Still loathe my goatee?" He asks, tongue darting out to lick Loki's fingers.  
  
    "I despise it much. Never remove it." He sighs, releasing the man’s face and curling back up against his side. Absorbing himself in the beat of Tony’s heart and warmth there.  
  
    "I'm sorry." Tony says breaking the quiet, his voice strained and the words sound incredibly honest. "I don’t think much. Not the way I should. I didn’t think that you'd be upset coming face to face with him."  
  
    "It’s over now." Loki says as he closes his eyes once more, blocking out the world around them. "I assure you, I have been through worse."   
  
    Tony scuffs like he's holding back saying something and Loki is glad, the breath ruffling his hair a little.  
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    The time more passed in the slow sweep of the sun over the floor and the tickles of breath against skin. A detached tingle of magic here and the glow of his interface there.   
  
    Not once does he suit up.   
  
    Jarvis doesn’t have to remind him to eat.   
  
    He still ignores calls from almost everyone but his reasons for his self imposed solitary, plus one, is much different than it used to be.   
  
    He draws blueprints up for a lab of sorts that he's not sure will ever be built.  
  
    Tony ignores the fact that their own clock is counting down. Not just waiting for the potion to brew but for Loki's magic to return to full power. For him to complete his spell and move on. To do what ever it is gods do in exile. Flee. Hide.   
  
    Alone.   
  
      
 Tony taps a beat against his reactor as he sits on the couch and really tries hard not to think. Watching the sun sparkle over sapphire waves as Loki pokes the pot of death in the kitchen. He wants to burn the fucking kitchen down to get rid of the stench in it.   
  
    Turning his head from the glittering waves he watches Loki in the kitchen. Black brows drawn in concentration, his hair falling forward around his face as he pours a ladle full of crimson dredges into a crystal decanter. Ever careful not to spill a drop.  
  
    The druid soup is as thick as cream now and the same vivid red color that he wears on his suit.   
  
    "So that’s it? All that work and stink for some kool-aid? It’s all a little anticlimactic if you ask me."  
  
    "This is only the first half." Loki says blowing his hair from his face in exasperation as he fills the rest of the decanter. Holding the vivid sludge up to the sun and examining it. "The second half is an easy incantation. The mirror complete?"   
  
    "Yup!" He smiles. It had been a pinch; Loki had needed two holes drilled into the corners of the mirrors so it could be hung from a frame with the silver wire. Tony for once had followed his orders to perfection. "All you got to do is pour that smelly shit over it."   
  
    "There are few potions I know of that have a pleasant odor Tony." Loki says with a crooked smile as he brings the decanter out to the patio where Tony had set up the mirror, per order. Following the god out and watching him kneel to tweak the angle of the mirror till it's reflecting the shining the sun. Flicking down his sunglasses from the top of his head he watches in rapid fascination.   
  
    Loki doesn’t use his scepter but his hands to wave the spell into the air, the reflection of the sun shining in blue sky in the mirror turns monochromatic and Tony takes a cautious step back.   
  
    The only other spell he's seen Loki attempt ended up quite literally blowing up in both of their faces.   
  
    As though reading his mind Loki shoots him a frown, Tony shrugging and grinning sheepishly in response.   
  
    "You can come closer, this one will not blow up, that was your fault may I remind you." Loki points out as Tony comes closer once more; careful to stand where he's not blocking the sun’s malevolent reflection in the mirror.   
  
    Standing to his feet Loki moves to the side of the frame and empties slowly the dredges of the decanter over the mirror where it slides down like blood in some B rated movie. At least out here in the sea breeze the stench isn’t quite so bad.   
  
    "Is that it?" Tony watches unimpressed by the drip of the garnish liquid into the bowl below the mirror.  
  
    "Watch..." Loki hisses to him, his tone a little strained and Tony realizes he's still feeding magic into the mirror, his hands glowing faintly green in the harsh mid day light.   
  
    Watch he does too, the sludge bubbling as it makes its slow trek down the smooth mirror’s surface to where it lands in the bowl in a hissing boil like it's dripped through a fire, not over glass. Swallowing thickly, he glances back to the mirror where the brew has run off. It’s black... it's as black as the space he glimpsed before passing out in the portal. Not even stars winking in the distance.   
  
    He leans closer, trying to see something, anything in the darkness. Loki's hand on his arm in a hard grab stopping him from getting too close.   
  
    "I said watch; do not touch, do not get too close. A mirror is a one sided view into a world. I've used them many times to view into other worlds. This is different, this is a temporary window." Loki voice is soft, like he's almost afraid to talk too loud.   
  
    That’s the tricky things with windows, they work both ways.   
  
    Tony takes a weary step back, Loki's hand sliding down his arm and holding onto his hand tight as the view in the mirror becomes clearer. The darkness shifting and changing like a camera panning around the view denser shapes shifting and moving amongst the inky black. Like shadows in a dark room, more an idea of motion than a view of it. There’s something in the darkness.  
  
    Loki's hand on his tightens to a painful point; Tony had only spent a matter of moments in the terrifying darkness. Loki spent a year.  
  
     As a ripple of color appears in all the darkness., flickering like a flame against a wind.   
  
    "This is Yggdrasil... the barrier." The god breathes out and Tony returns the grip tight.   
  
    "It didn’t look like that when you fell, did it?" He asks, the chill seeping down his spine, the sun and the waves forgotten around him as he watches the thin auroras wavers against the darkness pressing against it.  
  
    He wants to run away, to tell Loki to break the spell, watching in horror as the inky blackness seems too absorbed into the wavering rainbow of color, the protective barrier keeping everything safe.   
  
    So thin, so fragile.  
  
    "No." Loki whispers, his voice thin with fear. "I am out of time."   
  
    They only watch for a moment longer as the ribbon of energy dances. Loki releasing Tony's hand and going around to the back of the mirror, kicking his boot against it, the mirror shattering into a rain of glass down into the bowl. The spell broken. He takes a step back from the god as he picks up the crystal bowl full of glass and sordid liquid and pitches it off the edge of the porch and into the hungry ocean below.   
  
    "FUCK!" Loki screams out into the waves.   
  
    "Look at it this way; you've learned the use of the English language’s most useful four letter word?" Tony tries, keeping his distance from the angry god as long as he can. Slowly stepping forward as Loki sinks to his knees at the patio edge. His green eyes searching the water below like it holds all the answers.   
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
    Tony's hand on his back is warm against the chills running down his spine. Grounding him as fear and anger threatens to send him into a fit of anger and darkness. Breathing deep swallows of the warm salty air he collects his thoughts around him. Slowly looking up to the bright sun before turning his attention to Tony, the man pushing his sunglasses up his nose and offering a weak smile in turn.   
  
    "I need a few more things from you." He says, having to swallow a few times before recognizing his own voice is a ruin.   
  
    "Shoot." Tony says, putting a warm arm around him and settling into a sit before pulling him against his side. "Anything you need, or want."   
  
    The hidden message there isn't lost to Loki at all. Letting out a rough breath and collecting his thoughts he begins to list what it will take for the final spell.

 


	10. 10

  
    Tony's first lesson as a mage's pupil had been to cleanse. It is as much ritual as it is practical. The finer art of sageing and salting. Blessing. He’d taught him the proper things to say in Old Norse to appease what ever wandering spirits may be lingering in an area.   
  
    Tony learned everything Loki threw at him, soaking it up like a knowledge starved man, without cracking too many jokes. Although his Old Norse was atrocious, thankfully the spirits prefer it more for just the acknowledgment of their existence than anything else.  
  
    He'd already begun teaching him the basics of Wicca and Druid spells. Things Tony required not to tap into magic to use.   
  
    Having him bless the area where he is going to complete the spell is a nice little test of his slowly accumulating knowledge.  
  
    Much like when Tony had trusted him with the smart phone. Pointless object as it is, it pleases Tony much to see him use it.  
  
    It should disturb him how much he enjoys pleasing the mortal man.  
  
    Watching Tony settle back behind the last of the lit candles he can’t help but smile at the mortal’s choice of locations. Tony rises up after a moment, spread out his arms in his trademark theatrics. "Ready for this?"   
  
    Sighing heavily he realizes there is still so very much for Tony to learn. The concentration needed to collect the magic is monumental. Almost regretting bringing Tony in on this. Almost.   
  
    "I said you could watch only if silent, Stark." He says, using Tony's surname to keep himself emotionally separated for the time.   
  
    Tony rolls his eyes and moves across the room and mutters something under his breath, the salt crunching under his sneakers. Propping himself up onto a stool quietly. His mahogany eyes reflecting the flames there, the wonder and tension so strong in their dark depths that Loki has to look away.   
  
    Gripping his scepter tight in his hand as he steps out into the center of the workshop.   
  
    One calming breath.  
  
    One small thought cast back home before he thinks of the now. The mortal behind him. The worlds he wants to keep safe. Dare he even say protect.   
  
    Sweeping his scepter out, he calls upon his magic and deeper still to the magic of the nine realms. Bringing the astrophysical Yggdrasil into the physical world. Casting and weaving a strengthening spell to it on the galactic size. It’s bigger than anything he's ever tried to cast, the strain pushing down on his very soul as he binds himself to the barrier.   
  
    An ace up his sleeve for when Odin comes for his head. Not letting his mind wander on the matter at too important a moment he completes the spell. His shoulders dripping and breathes out a relieved sigh. The barrier holding strong, the bond to his soul equally so.   
  
    Slowly letting his eyes lift to Tony.   
  
    "Is it done? Are you okay? Nothing blew up this time!" The mortal clamors as he strides across the room and brings a smile to his mouth.  
  
    "Will you ever stop the use of that question? Yes, I am well and it is complete. I will monitor it," No need to tell Tony how, “But it is strong."  
  
    Tony nods as he accepts this answer freely, his eyes warm with an emotion Loki doesn’t understand. Looking down and away.  
  
    "So, what will you do now?" Tony asks, his voice drawing Loki's attention back to him. Their eyes meeting across the dim lights of the workshop.  
  
    That is a much deeper question than one he is willing to contemplate. He’d avoided the thoughts like they were a vicious animal too afraid of them to linger on the ideas.  
  
    "Loki..." Tony's voice is softer now, strained.   
  
    "I know not what I will do." His honesty splits his insides open like a pike.   
  
    "Malibu is great this time of year." He can hear the soft beg there, even if Tony wouldn’t admit it. There’s hope and longing and it echoes the feelings in Loki's own heart.   
  
    "I have grown fond of some things about Midgard." The sea, the knowledge, Italian dressing and the sounds Tony makes when he looses all inhibitions.  
  
    "Pizza and shots?" The mortal man grins wide and knowing as he walks to the doors that lead back up and into the quarters. Loki can’t help but roll his eyes a little.  
  
    "No. Your bread and sauce food is not one of the things."  
  
    "You’re just pissed because I refuse to get it without the sauce."   
  
    If Tony says anything after that Loki doesn’t hear his rambles, just the tone of his voice, looking around the workshop and its incredible blend between magic and science. Technology meeting archaic traditions. Alchemy.  
  
    He can stay. Even if just for a while.   
  
    He dares not call this place home, not yet, but as every day passes the idea of leaving it becomes more unpleasant to think of. The idea of leaving Tony becomes down right unbearable.  
  
  
o0o0o0o0o0o  
  
  
  
    It had taken Clint days to find an appropriate spot up the road where the cliff side jutted just right, the outcropping of wind beaten Cyprus trees were gnarled with age and elements but gave him the perfect nest.   
  
    He needed the most perfect for this. He could give nothing less to the man who had showed him who he really is inside.  
  
    Loki was like a centripetal force to Clint’s mind, forever drawing him in and keeping him close. His new sun.  
  
    He could end it. He could extinguish the sun forever more with the simple release of his fingers, the bow drawn tight. Four hundred pounds of pressure will move the deadly arrow through the air. Through his centripetal force.  
  
    He didn’t want to shoot him through the eye now. He will aim for the heart.  
  
    Clint’s arrow does not waver as it fixes on the god standing in the sun. His eyes closed, hair shifting against his shoulders with the sea breeze. The smile on his face is one of enjoyment, incredibly private.   
  
    Clint had never seen that smile.   
  
    He releases back on the bow slowly, keeping the arrow notched and at the read as he watches.   
  
    The god’s incredible presence shifts to look back behind him, that private smile growing. Eyes so bright that even half a mile away he can see the green there glow.   
  
    Tony Stark walks out to the sun lit back patio with the god, his hands in his pockets and his own smile rare and unguarded as warm as the sun that heats the waves.  
  
    Lips move. Twitching with murmured words as the two men look back out over the water.   
  
    Clint watches for a long time as the two talk, their words gentle maybe even a little teasing knowing Tony's tongue, maybe even with a little love. Hands brushing against arms, shared whispers even in private just so lips can grace skin.   
  
    Loki is a god amongst men, truly changing those whose lives he's around. He doubts Loki's even aware of it. His magic and destiny shifting other pieces on the chest board of life without so much as a look or a touch.   
  
    It is why gods are not to mix with mortals.   
  
    Clint knows this now; Tony may even see it too now that he's trapped in Loki's gravity. He may be on a different path, a rut that takes him closer to the burning sun than Clint ever traveled but it's still the same.  
  
    Clint returns the arrow to his quiver and his bow over his back. Watching close. Observing from his nest much like the hawk he's called.   
  
    The walkie-talkie at his hip beeps before static fills the air, its pulsing hiss matching the waves he's hanging over.  
  
    "Barton, what’s the situation with Stark?" Fury's voice comes out cracking with interference.   
  
    Clint tilts his head slowly, watching with sharp eyes as the man and god return into the mansion and out of his view, a slow smile spreading over his lips. Swinging down from the tree before retrieving the walkie at his hip.  
  
    "No situation sir. Stark is all clear."

 


End file.
